Google Photos now lets you describe how to transform images into video

Google is giving Photos users more control over the app’s generative photo-video functionality. Google Photos now supports text prompts for generating videos, according to Monday’s update announcement, allowing users to describe the specific movement, style or effect they want to see when bringing still images to life.

The text prompts join the existing “Subtle Movement” and “I’m Lucky” options already available for Google Photos’ image-to-video tool, neither of which allowed users to enter their own descriptions to guide the results. Google says Photos will provide quick suggestions “for instant video inspiration” and that text prompts can be edited to refine the resulting video generations.

The new text prompt feature is restricted to users aged 18 or older. This age restriction only applies to Google’s image-to-video tool in Photos, however: text prompts have been available for the same features in Gemini for some time, and are available to all users aged 13 or older. The ability to add descriptive prompts brings Photos’ picture-to-video tool closer to competing AI editors like xAI’s Grok, which has notably been abused to undress photos of real people and children.

Google Photos’ generative AI features are not yet available in all regions and exact functionality may vary by location. You can visit Google’s support page for more information on current restrictions.

The update also allows Google Photos users to include audio by default in every video they create using the picture-to-video feature, producing videos ready to post online without any additional editing. In another update, Google introduced a new Google Photos picker for Gmail that makes it easier to share images and videos from your albums, collections, and shared albums via email. The feature allows you to select multiple photos and videos at the same time and search for specific photos and album names.