[HN Gopher] Generate videos in Gemini and Whisk with Veo 2
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Generate videos in Gemini and Whisk with Veo 2
        
       Author : meetpateltech
       Score  : 337 points
       Date   : 2025-04-15 17:02 UTC (23 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.google)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
        
       | xnx wrote:
       | This is amazing. I wouldn't think that something as
       | computationally expensive as generating 8 second videos would be
       | available outside of paid API anytime soon.
        
       | delichon wrote:
       | I think I would buy "yes" shares in a Polymarket event that
       | predicts a motion picture created by a single person grossing
       | more than $100M by 2027.
        
         | kevingadd wrote:
         | I think the obstacles there are distribution and IP rights. I
         | think we will see content like that find widespread appeal and
         | success but actually turning it into $100m in revenue requires
         | having the copyright (at present, not possible for AI-generated
         | content) and being able to convince a distributor to invest in
         | it. Those both seem like really tough things to solve.
        
           | delichon wrote:
           | Purely AI-generated content -- with no human authorship -- is
           | not eligible for US copyright protection. However if a human
           | contributes meaningfully to the final output (editing,
           | selection, arrangement, etc.) it becomes eligible. See Thaler
           | v. Perlmutter (2023).
        
             | Workaccount2 wrote:
             | >is not eligible for US copyright protection
             | 
             | Once industry adopts AI generation, which it will, a new
             | law will be quickly signed.
             | 
             | In a way, not allowing copyright of AI material really only
             | serves a tiny group of people. "We want to empower everyone
             | to bring their ideas to market, not just those with the
             | ability to draw them" is not a particularly evil or amoral
             | sentiment.
        
               | gh0stcat wrote:
               | As if the ability is not attainable, people want to be
               | put on top of the mountain without any effort.
        
               | Workaccount2 wrote:
               | When society climbs mountains, they eventually build
               | elevators. Its a core functionality and the reason why we
               | are so advanced. Just take a moment to realize how many
               | peaks you already sit on top of, without even thinking
               | about. Your home is overflowing with cheap wares from
               | mountains ascended ages ago that you now have "no effort"
               | access to.
        
           | r58lf wrote:
           | Yeah, people underestimate how hard it is to get a movie into
           | a theatre AND get people to pay for a ticket.
           | 
           | Hollywood can barely get any well made movies past $100
           | million these days unless it's based on some well known
           | franchise (minecraft, Captain America, Snow White) or it has
           | some well known actor.
        
         | NitpickLawyer wrote:
         | I think you might need qualifiers on that. Are we talking an
         | unknown / unrelated person living in the proverbial basement,
         | or are we talking a famous movie director? I could see
         | Spielberg or Cameron managing to make something like that
         | happen on their name + AI alone.
         | 
         | If we're talking regular people, the best chance would be
         | someone like Andy Weir, blogging their way to a successful
         | book, and working on the side on a video project. I wouldn't be
         | surprised if something along these lines happens sooner or
         | later.
        
         | xnx wrote:
         | We've got a pretty good datapoint along that trajectory with
         | Flow. Almost entirely one person and has grossed $36 million.
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film)
        
           | jsheard wrote:
           | It was a small team for sure but not a one man show, there
           | are 22 credits for the animation work alone, plus 13 more for
           | sound and music, not counting the director.
        
             | xnx wrote:
             | > Almost entirely one person
             | 
             | It is closer to one than number the staff of other animated
             | films. It's a good data point to keep in mind as AI tools
             | enable even smaller teams to do more.
        
           | karolist wrote:
           | Went to the cinema with my kids for the 2nd time to watch
           | this one, was pleasantly surprised to read this movie was
           | done using Blender, highly recommended.
        
           | mattfrommars wrote:
           | One person? What do you mean? It literally says in the wiki
           | more than one.
           | 
           | This isn't solo dev game project.
        
         | silksowed wrote:
         | very excited to play around. will be attempting to see if i can
         | get character coherence between runs. the issue with the 8s
         | limit is its hard to stitch them together if characters are not
         | consistent. good for short form distribution but not youtube
         | mini series or eventual movies. another comment about IP
         | license is indeed an issue but its why i am looking towards
         | classical works beyond their copyright dates. my goal is to
         | eventually work from short form, to youtube to eventual short
         | films. tools are limited in their current form but the future
         | is promising if i get started now.
        
         | jddj wrote:
         | I came to the same sort of conclusion when watching Kitsune,
         | which I think was one person and VEO
         | https://vimeo.com/1047370252
         | 
         | Granted, 5 minutes isn't 1h30 but it's not a million miles away
         | either.
        
           | xrd wrote:
           | It's fantastic.
           | 
           | I just watched Kitsune, thanks for sharing.
           | 
           | It reminds me why Flow was so good.
           | 
           | Flow was great because I could see the shader artifacts. It
           | was the opposite of a Disney model, it was not polished and
           | perfect.
           | 
           | That's why I loved it. Disney would never do a movie with a
           | plot like Flow. They would write and rewrite it and it would
           | be a perfect example of humanity, but totally devoid of the
           | humanity behind it.
           | 
           | It is ironic that this new coming wave of AI generated (or AI
           | assisted) films feel like they have more human craftmanship
           | than Disney films, when honestly it is the opposite. Disney
           | has incredible and brilliant animators, but that is all
           | crushed behind the merchandising and gross behemoth of the
           | Disney corporation.
           | 
           | I used to love seeing independent films. Those art house
           | theaters really only exist in places like Portland, OR these
           | days. But, I'm excited about the next wave of film because
           | it'll permit small storytelling, and that's going to be
           | great.
        
           | gh0stcat wrote:
           | This actually so amateurish and cliche it's painful. The fact
           | people like this shows that art never had a chance when the
           | masses have no taste. This makes me depressed for artists and
           | the future.
        
             | jddj wrote:
             | It won't be novel the 100th or 1000th or millionth time,
             | and standards will rise accordingly. But for now it is, or
             | at least 2 months ago it was.
             | 
             | Someone created that relatively coherent 5min animated
             | story largely by communicating with a computer in natural
             | language.
             | 
             | The masses have had plenty worse
        
             | switchbak wrote:
             | Well sure, but we're in the early stages here smashing
             | bones together. When a few million bored teenagers bang at
             | this, I bet you'll see perspectives you've never thought
             | of. It'd be like having someone in the 1920's listen to
             | Nirvana - just a completely different experience.
             | 
             | Given the dreck coming out of Hollywood, I'm open to that,
             | even if other folks have to wade through a million shitty
             | videos for me to get it.
        
             | vo2maxer wrote:
             | Observations like these remind me of The Academie des
             | Beaux-Arts in France, and more specifically its official
             | Salon (the Salon de Paris), keeping Impressionist painters
             | out of established exhibitions.
        
               | gh0stcat wrote:
               | Yes because generating "art" that is entirely stealing
               | from the hard work and actual dedication put forth by
               | real artists is anything like the expressionist movement
               | in the 20th century.
        
             | x-complexity wrote:
             | > This actually so amateurish and cliche it's painful. The
             | fact people like this shows that art never had a chance
             | when the masses have no taste. This makes me depressed for
             | artists and the future.
             | 
             | This kind of rhetoric can best be summed up by one meme:
             | "It's the children who are wrong"
             | 
             | Spouting off "unwashed masses" prose will only make people
             | hate (snobs + critics + artists by proxy) more, if you're
             | not willing to do your part and stop shooting down
             | beginning attempts as "amateurish and cliche".
             | 
             | Actually say, **in words**, what directions & improvements
             | can be made.
        
           | msabalau wrote:
           | Kitsune is great!
           | 
           | I've been a VideoFX tester, and have made a couple of five
           | minute shorts. You end up having to generate a lot of shots
           | that you throw away. This is a lot easier to bear if you are
           | tester without really strict monthly limits, or having to pay
           | to get past them.
           | 
           | Also, there are all sorts of things you have to juggle or
           | sidestep related to character consistency and sound
           | synchronization. They'll be also sorts of improvements there,
           | but I suspect getting to 90 minutes isn't really a question
           | of spending more time and generations. Right now I think a
           | strong option for solo aspiring AI film makers is to work on
           | a number of small projects, to master the art, and tackle
           | longer projects when the tooling is better.
        
           | decimalenough wrote:
           | Damn, that's impressive. Probably the first AI movie I've
           | seen where you have to look pretty hard for the glitches: as
           | usual, leg motion gives it away, but even then only
           | occasionally when there's a lot else going on.
        
         | tracerbulletx wrote:
         | Everyone keeps ignoring supply and demand when talking about
         | the impacts of AI. Let's just assume it really gets so good you
         | can do this and it doesn't suck.
         | 
         | Yes the costs will get so low that there will be almost no
         | barrier to making content but if there is no barrier to making
         | content, the ROI will be massive, and so everyone will be doing
         | it, you can more or less have the exact movie you want in your
         | head on demand, and even if you want a bespoke movie from an
         | artist with great taste and a point of view there will be
         | 10,000 of them every year.
        
           | nmilo wrote:
           | It will be like YouTube. Distribution will be hard and most
           | of it will be slop but every now and then you'll discover
           | something so good and so creative and it couldn't have
           | possibly existed before that it makes the whole experience
           | worth it. The best creative works are led by one person and
           | I'm excited to see what people can come up with.
        
           | yorwba wrote:
           | And one of those 10,000 will have a multimillion marketing
           | budget and people are talking about it online and remixing it
           | into memes and it will make a lot more money than the second-
           | most popular movie, even though there's no discernable
           | quality difference.
        
             | Asraelite wrote:
             | It will basically be like the rise of indie games. Every
             | now and again you get something like Among Us which is low
             | quality but good enough to be enjoyable and with the right
             | combination of luck and timing it becomes insanely popular.
        
               | Wowfunhappy wrote:
               | Not just Among Us. You also get _Minecraft_!
        
           | mvdtnz wrote:
           | Most of us have no idea what movies we want. The most
           | delightful films are a total surprise (other than the drones
           | who watch every Marvel film of course).
        
           | barrenko wrote:
           | To quote Nikita Bier, never underestimate how many people
           | just want to watch Netflix and die.
        
             | greesil wrote:
             | Am I the only one who can't stand Netflix's deluge of
             | content? They occasionally had something good, but it's
             | like once every two years.
        
               | klondike_klive wrote:
               | You just need to drastically recalibrate your definition
               | of good.
        
               | barrenko wrote:
               | It's an AI slop factory, and it's not going to get any
               | better.
        
           | GloamingNiblets wrote:
           | A good parallel is writing books. Books can cost little to
           | write and publish, but their success is Pareto distributed,
           | not Normally distributed.
        
             | mlboss wrote:
             | Writing book is really expensive. You have to think and put
             | words on paper that engages the read. It is really hard.
        
           | motoxpro wrote:
           | Totally agree.
           | 
           | This is what Instagram and YouTube did and we got MrBeast and
           | Kylie Jenner making billions of dollars. The cost of creating
           | content is tapping record on your phone and the traditional
           | "quality" as defined by visuals doesn't matter (see Quibi).
           | Viral videos are selfies recorded in the bedroom.
           | 
           | When you lower the barrier to entry things get more
           | heterogeneous, not less. So you have bigger outcomes, not
           | smaller, because the playing field expands. TikTok's inside
           | was built on surfacing the 1 good video from a pool of 10s of
           | millions. The platforms that surface the best content will be
           | even more important.
           | 
           | It's a little disheartening, I think, for people to think
           | that the only reason they can't be creative is money, time,
           | or technical skill, but in reality, it's just that they
           | aren't that creative.
           | 
           | So yes, everyone can create content in a world of AI, but not
           | everyone is a good content creator/director/artist (or has
           | the vision), same as it is now.
        
             | SirMaster wrote:
             | Will the AI itself never be a good content
             | creator/director/artist?
             | 
             | People are always out there tying to convince others that
             | AI is better than humans at X. How close is it to being
             | better than humans at being a content creator itself? Or
             | how long before that threshold is crossed?
        
               | Workaccount2 wrote:
               | It will always be subjective. There will always be
               | holdouts who will denounce any AI work as "bad" simply
               | because it was created by AI.
               | 
               | Even when AI is objectively better and dominates in blind
               | ratings tests, there will still be a strong market for
               | "authentic" media.
               | 
               | For instance we already have factories that churn out
               | wares that are cheaper, stronger, better looking, and
               | longer lasting than "hand made", yet people still seek
               | out malformed $60 coffee mugs from the local artistan
               | section in country shops.
        
               | gampleman wrote:
               | I think the other angle is a deeper question of why are
               | you reading/viewing/listening to any particular piece?
               | 
               | For some content, say summer blockbusters the answer may
               | just be that it is moderately entertaining way to spend
               | some time. I expect AI may well be able to do reasonably
               | well in this category, although what we find entertaining
               | may well shift if the supply/demand curve shifts
               | drastically enough. In other words, people may still pay
               | to see a new action film even if it hasn't anything
               | particularly new to say.
               | 
               | Then there is the more cerebral kind of art. Where there
               | is an actual message that someone is trying to
               | communicate to us. It's a form of argument, but not
               | purely logical, but also aesthetical. I'm completely
               | unconvinced that present day AI architectures will ever
               | have something to say, purely because they lack agency,
               | and so there isn't anyone there saying it to us.
               | 
               | Finally, there is the art that is entirely spiritual or
               | internal. The whole point of that kind is the author
               | baring their soul to us. Why on earth would anyone want a
               | soulless machine barring their non-existent soul?
        
             | darepublic wrote:
             | I don't think Mr Beast is particularly creative. He makes
             | common denominator crap that appeals to kids. I expect the
             | same of Kylie Jenner
        
               | motoxpro wrote:
               | You may not like them, as another poster said, it's all
               | subjective.
               | 
               | That doesn't mean they aren't incredibly good at what
               | they do and that millions (billions) of people have tried
               | to do what they have and failed.
               | 
               | One of the reasons it's "common denominator crap" is
               | because the blob of the internet has 100s of millions of
               | videos copying MrBeast and the Jenner/Kardasians created
               | an entire generation of people that wanted to be
               | influencers. Most of the copies are Slop.
               | 
               | Once they are intrenched they can continue to produce
               | "crap" as you call it because they have distribution, the
               | copies don't work because they aren't novel, which makes
               | people feel like it doesn't take talent and is the
               | algorithms fault, until the next person to be "creative"
               | gets distribution and the cycle repeats.
               | 
               | There is just a lot less creativity than people imagine.
               | It's not a right that we all have as humans; it's rare.
               | 8.2 billion people on earth, 365 days in a year, 3
               | trillion shots on goal, and only a few hundred novel
               | discoveries, art creations, companies, and ideas come
               | from it.
        
               | wongarsu wrote:
               | Meanwhile the cost of his videos is insanely high. The
               | "insane" price money is the smallest part of it. He has
               | insane sets he uses for only one or a small number of
               | videos, he has a giant staff, high quality gear and many
               | of his videos include either challenges going on over
               | very long timespans or involving a high number of
               | participants, making the logistics, recording and editing
               | of those videos challenging and time intensive. Most TV
               | shows could only dream of doing what he does.
               | 
               | He started out simple, pointing a phone camera at himself
               | counting really high, but his current channel is not a
               | great example of a low barrier to entry. He explicitly
               | sets himself apart by doing what other youtube creators
               | or TV shows simply can't do
        
             | jayd16 wrote:
             | No single piece of content grossed 100m though. It just
             | allowed for more low investment content at a higher rate,
             | while the popularity of the site pushed them to celebrity
             | status.
        
           | panarky wrote:
           | That was the story with CGI too, that there would be
           | overwhelming supply that drives prices and value toward zero.
           | 
           | And yet Marvel exists.
           | 
           | Turns out in a world of infinite supply, value comes from
           | story, character, branding, marketing and celebrity. Those
           | factors in combination have very limited supply and people
           | still pay up.
           | 
           | I don't see any reason why AI-gen video is any different.
        
             | tracerbulletx wrote:
             | It's still quite difficult and extremely time consuming to
             | create a visual effect. And the technique to film actors
             | and blend them is additionally quite difficult. If you get
             | to the point one person can make a movie, yes you will be
             | limited by your own creativity, but the number of people
             | who can do that is still a lot greater than the number of
             | people who can do that, and manage a 200 million dollar
             | budget production and get an end product that meets their
             | vision.
        
           | googlryas wrote:
           | A lot of people can't actually say what kind of movie they
           | want, until they see it. And even if there are 100,000
           | releases every year in every genre, virality will probably
           | still exist where even if random, one of those movies is
           | going to get more popular than the rest and then everyone
           | will "need" to see it.
        
           | bufferoverflow wrote:
           | Unless something radically changes, we're quite far from
           | creating movies on demand. Most AI video generators cost
           | ~$1-10 per minute. And generally it takes many attempts to
           | generate a few seconds of anything that's not completely
           | trash.
           | 
           | Another issue is quality. Most of these AI generators output
           | quite blurry 720p. If you want proper 4K output, we're at
           | least a couple of doublings away.
           | 
           | I think we will have some decent AI-generated animations next
           | year, because 2D cartoons are relatively easy to upscale.
        
             | eMPee584 wrote:
             | there's a blender mcp addon available for folks who already
             | have a clue how to make use of that..
        
           | victorbjorklund wrote:
           | This. Having a super highly grossing movie makes no sense
           | (maybe first one will just because people wanna see it for
           | the novelty of it). The potential would be niche content that
           | might even end up with movies tailored just to one person.
        
           | dgs_sgd wrote:
           | AI will level the playing field for creation but not for
           | distribution. The AI movie created by someone who's already
           | Hollywood or social media famous will get more attention than
           | a nobody.
        
         | colesantiago wrote:
         | My prediction is on track to this and this was made only 4
         | months ago.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42368951
        
           | delichon wrote:
           | There may be a solo (not Han) movie good enough to compete in
           | five years, but I doubt that Academy voters will be that
           | welcoming of the tech that can obliterate most of their jobs
           | by then.
        
             | kridsdale1 wrote:
             | Based on the training data being pop culture, we may even
             | get a good Han Solo movie from tools like this. Starring
             | young Ford.
        
             | switchbak wrote:
             | If AI can fix the terrible ending that was Game of Thrones,
             | then perhaps it won't have been a complete waste after all.
        
               | anshumankmr wrote:
               | What ending for Game of Thrones? Wasn't it cancelled
               | after Season 6?
        
         | SirMaster wrote:
         | Well text generation is way ahead of video generation. Have we
         | seen anyone create something like a best selling or high
         | grossing novel with an LLM yet?
        
           | delichon wrote:
           | That's why going from one person to zero persons will be so
           | hard. But one Kubrick/Carmack and a bunch of AI could make a
           | compelling movie now.
        
         | bookofjoe wrote:
         | Me too. Sam Altman recently predicted that we will see a one-
         | person unicorn company in the near future.
        
         | hammock wrote:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film)
         | 
         | $36 million dollars and an Academy Award. A l m o s t done by
         | just one person. And entirely with open source software.
         | 
         | The guy's previous movie was a true one-man show but didn't
         | really get screenings:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Away_(2019_film)
        
           | farzd wrote:
           | `The movie "Flow" cost approximately $3.7 million to $4
           | million to produce` - big budget for almost one person.
        
         | baxtr wrote:
         | I can't exactly say why, but I find this "single person $1B
         | company" meme utterly annoying.
        
         | tclancy wrote:
         | But will it cost less than $100M to render?
        
       | minimaxir wrote:
       | Whisk itself (https://labs.google/fx/tools/whisk) was released a
       | few months ago under the radar as a demo for Imagen 3 and it's
       | actually fun to play with and surprisingly robust given its
       | particular implementation.
       | 
       | It uses a prompt transmutation trick (convert the uploaded images
       | into a textual description; can verify by viewing the description
       | of the uploaded image) and the strength of Imagen 3's actually
       | modern text encoder to be able to adhere to those long transmuted
       | descriptions for Subject/Scene/Style.
        
         | torginus wrote:
         | Why text? why not encode the image into some latent space
         | representation, so that it can survive a round-trip more or
         | less faithfully?
        
           | minimaxir wrote:
           | Because Imagen 3 is a text-to-image model, not an image-to-
           | image model, so the inputs have to be some form of text.
           | Multimodal models such as 4o image generation or Gemini 2.0
           | which can take in both text and image inputs do encode image
           | inputs to a latent space through a Vision Transformer, but
           | not reverseable or losslessly.
        
             | waffletower wrote:
             | Typically generative models, particularly diffusion models
             | like Imagen 3, are easily architected to support several
             | vectors toward the latent space of the model. It is not
             | open source so there might be an architectural reason I
             | cannot see, but I don't think the public interface to the
             | model should suggest its capabilities -- it is uncommon for
             | image to image not to be supported in open source image
             | generation models, for example. However, there are definite
             | legal reasons not to provide such a vector in a public
             | facing model like Imagen 3.
        
             | waffletower wrote:
             | And Gemini gave the Yes-man treatment to my statement here
             | :D "In summary: Your assessment aligns well with the
             | technical realities of diffusion models and the practical,
             | legal, and safety considerations large companies face when
             | deploying powerful generative AI tools publicly. It's
             | entirely feasible that Imagen 3's underlying architecture
             | could support image inputs, but Google has chosen not to
             | expose this capability publicly due to the associated risks
             | and complexities."
        
           | flkenosad wrote:
           | Text might honestly be the best latent space representation.
        
             | waffletower wrote:
             | A word tells a thousand pictures.
        
           | doctorpangloss wrote:
           | They don't want you to modify images you supply yourself.
        
           | Uehreka wrote:
           | There's a thing called CLIP Vision that sort of does that,
           | but it converts the image into conditioning space (the same
           | space as the embeddings from a text prompt). I'd say it
           | works... OK.
        
         | cubefox wrote:
         | > This tool isn't available in your country yet
         | 
         | > Enter your email to be notified when it becomes available
         | 
         | (Submit)
         | 
         | > We can't collect your emails at the moment
        
           | fragmede wrote:
           | GDPR ftw!
        
             | patates wrote:
             | I'm not a lawyer but I thought GDPR didn't prevent that. It
             | adds a lot of restrictions on how they can use those emails
             | for how long, but not a complete ban on explicit sharing of
             | emails.
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | If you read it very carefully, and then behave very
               | carefully, you can comply with the law. Orrrrrr you can
               | just not bother for your first pass, simply block the EU
               | for now, and release it for them after you go and clean
               | it up later.
        
               | the_duke wrote:
               | Yup that's what's been happening with many models. US
               | first and Europe comes a few months after once they
               | double checked everything and made sure the paperwork is
               | in order.
               | 
               | Easily circumventes with a VPN though, most just limit by
               | location, not busy account data.
        
         | j45 wrote:
         | Seems to require a paid subscription to actually use all the
         | way thru.
        
       | smallnix wrote:
       | Brave to make ads with the Ghibli style. Would have thought
       | that's burned by now.
        
         | minimaxir wrote:
         | Looking at the video, I think there's shenanigans afoot. The
         | anime picture they input as a sample image is more generic
         | anime, but the example output image is _clearly_ Ghibli-esque
         | in the same vein as the 4o image generations.
        
         | gh0stcat wrote:
         | No one has any morals or soul at this point. It's all garbage
         | in, garbage out.
        
       | byearthithatius wrote:
       | Very impressive release compared to what was possible even a
       | single year ago. It feels like we are in a great state right now
       | with respect to ML where all the big companies are competing and
       | pushing each other to make the tech better. This is rare nowadays
       | in America (or in general).
        
       | strangattractor wrote:
       | Google is the new Microsoft in the sense that they can Embrace,
       | extend, and extinguish their competition. No matter what xAI or
       | OpenAI or "anything"AI tries to build Google will eventually copy
       | and destroy them at scale. AI (or A1 as our Secretary of
       | Education calls it) is interesting because it is more difficult
       | to protect the IP other than as trade secrets.
        
         | mritun wrote:
         | > Google will eventually copy...
         | 
         | Weird take given Google basically invented and released through
         | well written papers and open-source software the modern deep
         | learning stack which all others build on.
         | 
         | Google was being disses because they failed to make any product
         | and were increasingly looking like Kodak/Xerox one trick pony.
         | It seems they have woken up from whatever slumber they were in
        
           | Workaccount2 wrote:
           | They didn't entirely drop the ball since they did develop
           | TPUs in anticipation of heavy ML workloads in the future.
           | They tripped over themselves getting an LLM out, but quickly
           | recovered primarily because they didn't have to run to nvidia
           | and beg for chips like everyone else in the field is stuck
           | doing.
        
           | strangattractor wrote:
           | Like MS, Google is ubiquitous - search is much like Office
           | and DOS before that. Anything OpenAPI or the other AI
           | competitors create would normally be protected by patents for
           | instance. Not so with an AI models. Google has the clout/know
           | how to responded with similar technology - adding it to their
           | ubiquitous search. People are both lazy and cheap. They will
           | always go with cheaper and good enough.
        
             | harrall wrote:
             | Google invented the technology.
             | 
             | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need
             | 
             | OpenAI was the copycat.
             | 
             | If Google had patented this technique, OpenAI wouldn't have
             | existed.
        
               | strangattractor wrote:
               | How do you patented it? What specific "practical, real-
               | world application" does AGI purport to solve? All these
               | algorithms work by using massive amounts of data. They
               | all do it the same way or close to the same way.
               | 
               | "Algorithms can be patented when integrated into specific
               | technical applications or physical implementations. The
               | U.S. Patent Office assesses algorithm-based patent
               | applications based on their practical benefits and
               | technological contributions.
               | 
               | Pure mathematical formulas or abstract algorithms cannot
               | be patented. To be eligible, an algorithm must address a
               | tangible technical challenge or enhance computational
               | performance measurably.
               | 
               | Patenting an AI algorithm means protecting how it
               | transforms data into a practical, real-world application.
               | Although pure mathematical formulas or abstract ideas
               | aren't eligible for patents, algorithms can be embedded
               | in a specific process or device." [1]
               | 
               | [1] https://patentlawyer.io/can-you-patent-an-
               | algorithm/#:~:text...
        
         | navigate8310 wrote:
         | > ... Google will eventually copy and destroy them at scale
         | 
         | Google Wave and Google + are a fine example of how they tried
         | to extinguish the then nascent Facebook
        
       | bk496 wrote:
       | I wonder what takes more compute power: this or a blender render
       | farm?
        
       | torginus wrote:
       | I am not really technical in this domain, but why is everything
       | text-to-X?
       | 
       | Wouldn't it be possible to draw a rough sketch of a terrain, drop
       | a picture of the character, draw a 3D spline for the walk path,
       | while having a traditional keyframe style editor, and give
       | certain points some keyframe actions (like character A turns on
       | his flashlight at frame 60) - in short, something that allows
       | minute creative control just like current tools do?
        
         | Rebelgecko wrote:
         | You can do image+text as well (although maybe the results are
         | better if you do raw image to prompted image to video?)
        
         | minimaxir wrote:
         | Everything is text-to-X because it's less friction and
         | therefore more fun. It's more a marketing thing.
         | 
         | There are _many_ workflows for using generative AI to adhere to
         | specific functional requirements (the entire ComfyUI ecosystem,
         | which includes tools such as LoRAs /ControlNet/InstantID for
         | persistence) and there are many startups which abstract out
         | generative AI pipelines for specific use cases. Those aren't
         | fun, though.
        
         | nodja wrote:
         | Dataset.
         | 
         | To train these models you need inputs and expected output. For
         | text-image pairs there exists vast amounts of data (in the
         | billions). The models are trained on text + noise to output a
         | denoised image.
         | 
         | The dataset of sketch-image pairs are significantly smaller,
         | but you can finetune an already trained text->image model using
         | the smaller dataset by replacing the noise with a sketch, or
         | anything else really, but the quality of the output of the
         | finetuned model will highly depend on the base text->image
         | model. You only need several thousand samples to create a
         | decent (but not excellent) finetune.
         | 
         | You can even do it without finetuning the base model and
         | training a separate network that applies on top of base
         | text->image model weights, this allows you to have a model that
         | essentially can wear many hats and do all kinds of image
         | transformations without affecting the performance of the base
         | model. These are called controlnets and are popular with the
         | stable diffusion family of models, but the general technique
         | can be applied to almost any model.
        
           | indexerror wrote:
           | These datasets would definitely have a lot of Text => Sketch
           | pairs as well. I wonder if its possible to extrapolate from
           | Text => Sketch and Text => Image pairs to improve Sketch =>
           | Image capabilities. The models must be doing some notion of
           | it already.
        
         | wepple wrote:
         | LLMs were entirely text not that long ago.
         | 
         | Multi modality is new; you won't have to wait too long until
         | they can do what you're describing.
        
         | TacticalCoder wrote:
         | I want ...-to-3D-scene. Then I can use Blender to render the
         | resulting picture and/or vid. Be it "text-to-3D-scene" or
         | "image-to-3D-scene".
         | 
         | And there's a near infinity of data out there to train "image-
         | to-3D-scene" models. You can literally take existing stuff and
         | render it from different angles, different lighting, different
         | background, etc.
         | 
         | I've seen a few unconclusive demos of "...-to-3D-scene" but
         | this 100% coming.
         | 
         | I can't wait to sketch out a very crude picture and have an AI
         | generate me a 3D scene out of that.
         | 
         | > ... in short, something that allows minute creative control
         | just like current tools do?
         | 
         | With 3D scenes generated by AI, one shall be able to decide to
         | just render it as it (with proper lighting btw) or one shall
         | all all the creative control he wants.
         | 
         | I want this _now_. But I 'll settle with waiting a bit.
         | 
         | P.S: same for songs and sound FX by the way... I want the AI to
         | generate me stuff I can import in an open-source DAW. And this
         | is 100% coming too.
        
         | fragmede wrote:
         | image-to-image speech-to-speech exists; yes almost everything
         | is text-to, but there are exceptions
        
         | spyder wrote:
         | Huh "everything text-to-X"? Most video gen AI has image-to-
         | video option too either as a start or end frame or just as a
         | reference for subjects and environment to include in the video.
         | Some of them even has video-to-video options too, to restyle
         | the visuals or reuse motions from the reference video.
        
       | volkk wrote:
       | this is semi-relevant -- and I do love how technically amazing
       | this all is, but a massive caveat for someone who's been dabbling
       | hard in this space, (images+video) -- I cannot emphasize enough
       | how draining text-2-<whatever> is. even when a result comes out
       | that's kind of cool, I feel nothing because it wasn't really me
       | who did it.
       | 
       | I would say 97% of the time, the results are not what I want (and
       | of course that's the case, it's just textual input) and so I
       | change the text slightly, and a whole new thing comes out that is
       | once again incorrect, and then I sit there for 5minutes while
       | some new slop churns out of the slop factory. All of this back
       | and forth drains not only my wallet/credits, but my patience and
       | my soul. I really don't know how these "tools" are ever supposed
       | to help creatives, short of generating short form ad content that
       | few people really only want to work on anyway. So far the only
       | products spawning from these tools are tiktok/general internet
       | spam companies.
       | 
       | The closest thing that I've bumped into that actually feels like
       | it empowers artists is https://github.com/Acly/krita-ai-diffusion
       | that plugs into Krita and uses a combination of img2img with
       | masking and txt2img. A slightly more rewarding feedback loop
        
         | dsign wrote:
         | > So far the only products spawning from these tools are
         | tiktok/general internet spam companies.
         | 
         | Help me here. If tiktok becomes filled with these, will it mean
         | that watching tiktok "curated" algorithmic results will be
         | about digesting AI content? Like, going to a restaurant to be
         | served rubber balloons full of air that then people will do
         | their best to swallow whole?[^1]. Could this be it? The demise
         | of the algorithm? Or will people just swallow rubber balloons
         | filled with air?
         | 
         | [^1]: Do please use this sentence as a prompt :-)
        
       | hu3 wrote:
       | is there a tool to generate AI videos that doesn't change the
       | original picture so much?
       | 
       | Whisk redraws the entire thing and it barely resembles source
       | picture.
        
         | vunderba wrote:
         | Wan 2.1 can do a decent job with i2v.
         | 
         | https://comfyanonymous.github.io/ComfyUI_examples/wan
        
         | CSMastermind wrote:
         | You want Kling: https://klingai.com/global/
         | 
         | Everything else performs terribly at that task, though a bunch
         | including Sora technically have that functionality.
         | 
         | Google's tool forcing you to redraw the image is silly.
        
         | rishabhjain wrote:
         | Try Snowpixel https://snowpixel.app/
        
       | wewewedxfgdf wrote:
       | 1: Press release about amazing AI development.
       | 
       | 2: "Try it now!" the release always says.
       | 
       | 3: I go try it.
       | 
       | 4: Doesn't work. In this case, I give it a prompt to make a video
       | and literally nothing happens, it goes back to the prompt. In the
       | case of the breathtakingly astonishing Gemini 2.5 Coding - attach
       | to source code file to the prompt "file type not supported".
       | 
       | That's the pattern - I've come to expect it and was not
       | disappointed with Google Gemini 2.5 coding nor with this video
       | thing they are promoting here.
        
         | siva7 wrote:
         | you're using it wrong. change file ending to .txt instead
        
           | bornfreddy wrote:
           | I can't tell if this is sarcasm or a helpful advice?
        
             | Workaccount2 wrote:
             | It's how you have to do it. The gemini model is excellent,
             | but the implementation/chat environment seems like it was
             | thrown together in a weekend as an afterthought.
             | 
             | You cannot upload a .py file, but if you change the name to
             | "main.txt" you can upload it, and it will automatically
             | treat it as "main.py". Not sure how this hasn't been fixed
             | yet, but it is google so...
        
         | throwup238 wrote:
         | On the contrary I had completely written off Google until a few
         | days ago.
         | 
         | Gemini 2.5 Pro is finally competitive with GPT/Claude, their
         | Deep Research is better and has a 20/day limit rather than
         | 10/month, and now with a single run of Veo 2 I've gotten a much
         | better and coherent video than from dozens of attempts at Sora.
         | They finally seem to have gotten their heads collectively
         | unstuck from their rear end (but yeah it sucks not having
         | access).
        
           | energy123 wrote:
           | Gemini 2.5 Pro is smarter, faster, cheaper and longer context
           | than o1.
        
         | martinald wrote:
         | I really don't know why Google especially seems to struggle
         | with this so much.
         | 
         | While Google have really been 'cooking' recently, every launch
         | they do is like that. Gemini 2.5 was great but for some reason
         | they launched it on web first (which still didn't list it) then
         | a day or so later on app, at which point I thought it was total
         | vapourware.
         | 
         | This is the same - I have gemini advanced subscription, but it
         | is nowhere to be seen in mobile or app. If you're having
         | scale/rollout issues how hard is it to put the model somewhere
         | and say 'coming really soon'? You don't know if it's not
         | launched yet or you are missing where to find it.
        
         | nolist_policy wrote:
         | On Chrome you can share your whole Project directory to Gemini.
         | I think it uses the File System Access api which Firefox
         | doesn't support.
        
       | ninininino wrote:
       | As usual with Gen AI the curated demo itself displays
       | misunderstanding and failure to meet the prompt. In the "Glacial
       | Cavern" demo, the "candy figures" are not within the ice walls
       | but are in the foreground/center of the scene.
       | 
       | These things are great (I am not being sarcastic, I mean it when
       | I say great) if and only if you don't actually care about all of
       | your requirements being met, but if exactness matters they are
       | mind-bogglingly frustrating because you'll get so close to what
       | you want but some important detail is wrong.
        
         | dsign wrote:
         | Indeed.
         | 
         | Even a bad VFX artist has so much more control over what they
         | do. I think that the day "text-to-video" reaches the level of
         | control that said bad VFX artist has from week one, it will be
         | because we have sentient AIs which will, for all ends and
         | purposes, be people.
         | 
         | That's not to say that there is no place for AI-generated
         | content. Worst case scenario, it will be so good at poisoning
         | the well that people will need to find another well.
        
       | kumarm wrote:
       | Pretty disappointed with content moderation on Veo2. Here are the
       | steps I did:
       | 
       | 1. Took a picture of me and asked to describe person in the
       | image.
       | 
       | 2. Used Imagegen to create the cartoon version using description.
       | 
       | 3. Tried to use veo-2.0-generate-001 to generate video of person
       | in image (holding a coffee cup in original image) drinking coffee
       | and having a conversation.
       | 
       | Video generation is blocked by content moderation.
        
       | bredren wrote:
       | The UI on this product page does not make any sense to me. The
       | three prompt workflows don't stack in any obvious way, then
       | seemingly combine on any submission to the main prompt area?
       | 
       | They generate independent images.
       | 
       | Gemini's web interface is also way behind chatgpt and Claude. The
       | mobile app is even worse.
       | 
       | This is while having the champ 2.5 pro model in the pocket.
       | 
       | It seems that web product resources are not getting adequate
       | allocation to the AI group(s).
        
       | deyiao wrote:
       | Content moderation is incredibly frustrating -- it might even be
       | the key reason why Veo2 and even Gemini could ultimately fail. I
       | just want to make some fun videos where my kid plays a superhero,
       | but it keeps failing.
        
         | itake wrote:
         | I have the same issues with OpenAI. Supposedly Grok is better,
         | but their quality isn't as high.
        
         | voxic11 wrote:
         | Are you trying to make your kid play a superhero or a specific
         | copyrighted superhero? I'm just asking because I would expect
         | them to attempt to prevent copyright infringement but I'm not
         | sure why they would prevent you from depicting superheros which
         | don't infringe on copyright. Maybe they are attempting to
         | prevent any depictions of children, superhero or otherwise?
        
       | anonzzzies wrote:
       | I have Advanced but no Veo2 model; is it controlled rollout or
       | something again?
        
       | pdntspa wrote:
       | I burned through $48 in GCP credit making 12x 8-second videos in
       | Veo2. Beware...
        
       | Palmik wrote:
       | There's also Google Vids, also using Veo 2 under the hood.
       | Product confusion :) https://workspace.google.com/products/vids/
        
         | j45 wrote:
         | This seems very different and much more developed in a
         | different direction.
        
       | tefkah wrote:
       | evil technology
        
       | somishere wrote:
       | Two notes:
       | 
       | - is there a sly dig in there at Meta? Ice cream melting ...
       | blue-suited hand
       | 
       | - the Ghibli style feels controversial
        
       | snappyleads wrote:
       | I been waiting along time for this - how long before we get to
       | the 30sec - 1 min milestone for video generation - why is it
       | capped - is it hardware limitations or software?
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-16 17:02 UTC)