Unreal: A quantum leap in AI video

James Manyika speaks about Imagen 3 and Veo at a Google event

Veo 3 produces AI clips that are "nearly indistinguishable from real ones."

(Image credit: Jeff Chiu / AP)

AI video has made it harder than ever to trust what you're seeing online, said Andrew R. Chow and Billy Perrigo in Time. "While text-to-video generators have existed for several years," Google's new Veo 3 video generator "marks a significant jump forward." Unlike OpenAI's video generator, Sora, Veo 3 introduces sound, producing AI clips that "are nearly indistinguishable from real ones." Within days of its release, users had already posted "fake news segments in multiple languages, including an anchor announcing the death of author J.K. Rowling." (She is not dead.) Previous versions of AI videos were either comically crude or easily detectable as being manipulated. Today's models are so good they're frightening—and they will have real-world implications.

The genie is out of the bottle, said Ruben Circelli in PCMag. AI video generation is only going to get more realistic from here. When Veo 3 inevitably allows users to generate videos based on pictures you upload, the harassment potential will multiply. "Don't like your boss? Send a clip to HR of them doing something inappropriate." With this technology, "the only real limits are your imagination and your morality." Google has some "obvious guardrails" in place, said Allison Johnson in The Verge. "You can't prompt it to create a video of Biden tripping and falling," nor can you create a fake news anchor announcing the assassination of a president. That said, I was easily able to prompt Veo 3 "to create a video of the Space Needle on fire." I imagine it won't be long before a full-length movie will get made with Veo 3.

Hollywood is warming to the creative possibilities, said Lila Shapiro in Vulture. Several effects studios have launched recently that work with generative video. One of them, Runway, has a partnership with Lionsgate, which turned over its entire library, to "repackage and resell" content the studio owns. "Now we can say, 'Do it in anime, make it PG-13,'" Lionsgate vice-chairman Michael Burns said. "Three hours later, I'll have the movie." AI can make possible scenes—for instance, "10,000 soldiers on a hillside in a snowstorm"—that would cost millions to make with live actors. For amateurs, though, the process for making real creative work is still daunting, said Joanna Stern and Jarrard Cole in The Wall Street Journal. Even using Veo 3 and multiple helper tools, you are not going to "paste in a script and out pops a Netflix hit." We did manage to make a short funny film. Some of it was realistic enough that it will "blow you away." But it took making 1,000 separate clips to get it right—and a lot of "human input, creativity, and original ideas."