Google adds Gemini Omni and personal avatars to Google Vids

Google announced two updates to Google Vids, its Workspace video-creation tool, adding Gemini Omni-powered generation and personal avatars that let users appear in videos without filming themselves. Per Google's Workspace blog, the features let users create, edit, and 'star in' videos generated by AI — extending Gemini's multimodal reach into everyday workplace content creation.

The personal-avatar capability is the eye-catching piece: users can generate a likeness that delivers scripted content, useful for training videos, internal comms, and marketing without a camera crew. Gemini Omni provides the underlying generation and editing intelligence, tying Vids into Google's flagship model brand at a moment when Google is aggressively rebranding products under the Gemini name (see the NotebookLM→Gemini Notebook move the same week).

Strategically this is Google racing to embed generative video across Workspace before rivals — Microsoft's Copilot and standalone tools like Synthesia and HeyGen — lock in the corporate avatar-video market. The risks are the familiar ones for AI avatars: deepfake and consent concerns, uncanny-valley quality, and enterprise wariness about likeness rights. For now it's a feature-parity play that keeps Workspace competitive; the question is whether Gemini Omni's output quality is good enough that teams actually replace real recordings with it.