Google added personal AI avatars to Vids, its Workspace video tool, letting users generate a digital double that mirrors their appearance and voice from an uploaded selfie and voice recording. Gemini Omni also comes to Vids, turning a written prompt and reference images into video while handling background swaps, lighting fixes, effects, and step-by-step edits instead of restarts. Avatars stay bound to the user’s own likeness and Google account, carry invisible SynthID watermarks, and reach only users 18 and older in certain regions. Updates push Vids past its original workplace-presentation role toward an all-in-one video platform, putting it in closer competition with AI-avatar startups like HeyGen, Synthesia, Captions, and D-ID, months after OpenAI shut down its own star-in-your-video app Sora.
