Google Photos will soon let you animate your stills, here’s how (APK teardown)
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Photos could soon introduce a new Remix feature that uses generative AI to help users create short videos from still images.
- We first spotted the feature in a teardown in May and gave you an early look at its interface last month.
- Google has since updated its UI and added a new pop-up showcasing how the feature works.
Google is prepping a new generative AI feature for Google Photos that will allow users to convert still images into short video clips with just a tap. We first spotted this upcoming Remix feature in a teardown in May and gave you an early look at its interface last month. While the feature has yet to reach users, Google has made some additional changes that should help familiarize users with this new functionality.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
Google has added a new pop-up to introduce the Remix feature in the latest Google Photos release (version 7.36) and updated its interface to give it a cleaner, more modern look. The new pop-up shows a sample image at the top alongside a clip generated from that image, as shown in the video below.
It also includes a simple description, an experimental feature disclaimer, and a “Try now” button. This pop-up will likely appear the first time users open Google Photos after the feature rolls out. Along with this pop-up, Google has cleaned up the prompt interface for the feature. Instead of stacked pill-shaped buttons, the updated interface features three large rectangular buttons at the bottom for the “Subtle movements,” “Go wild,” and “I’m feeling lucky” prompts.
Google has even updated the animation that plays when the feature generates a video, and added a line to this page stating that video creation could take up to a minute. Sadly, the feature still isn’t functional in the current Google Photos release, and delivers an error when trying to generate a video using one of the prompts. We’ll keep an eye on future developments and let you know as soon as it goes live.
