What you need to know
- Google Photos’ new AI-powered video editor can create slideshows based on certain tags such as featured people, locations, or time periods.
- You can add music and sync it to the video to make it look even more professional.
- The new tool can also help you create albums and collages, and you can share all of this media content with your friends and family on the fly.
Google Photos is getting an update that lets you control when and what kind of slideshows it creates for you, putting an end to those random slideshows with terrible pictures.
The search giant announced on X (formerly Twitter) that Google Photos’ new “Highlight video” feature makes it easy to create AI-powered reels of your favorite moments. To create a highlight video, open Photos on Android or iOS, tap the plus icon at the top of your gallery, and choose “Highlight video” from the menu.
You’ll then see a search box where you can search for the people, places, or activities you want to include in your video, and Photos will use AI to choose the best clips and photos.
The photo editor app will also add some tunes to your highlight reel and sync it up all nice-like. If Photos’ AI choices don’t suit you, you can easily edit the video to your liking before sharing it with others.
Unfortunately, Google’s new video editor isn’t perfect. For example, black spaces appear on any photos that aren’t in a vertical format, as shown below.
Create a highlight video of your favorite vacation, activity, or event in just a few taps! Simply search for what you want to feature, and Google Photos will choose the best clips & photos in your gallery, add music and sync the video to the music to bring it all together. pic.twitter.com/oJlmsFTDZROctober 24, 2023
But in time, Photos may gain the ability to fit pictures and clips of different shapes into the vertical video format.
Photos’ Memories feature also recently got a somewhat similar tool that lets you team up with friends and family to create albums. It relies on generative AI to curate and organize photos as well as suggest titles.
Of course, auto-created highlight videos can be a bit hit-or-miss sometimes. But we’re excited to see what Google’s new AI director can do. The goal is to make photos and videos easier for everyone to use, even if they’re not professional editors.
9to5Google reports that this feature replaces the current movie creator, which basically does the same thing. However, it doesn’t give you more control over the video creation process and only offers eight presets that may sometimes add undesirable clips or pictures to the slideshow.