Google Makes It Easy to Deepfake Yourself

A wave of déjà vu washes over me as Elias Roman, vice president of product management at Google Labs, demos a new “avatar” feature for Flow, the company’s tool that lets users generate and remix AI videos and images. He previously scanned his likeness to create a digital clone of himself. Now, he can insert himself into any AI-generated videoclip he wants using Google’s new Omni Flash model.

“This is for creators who want to bring themselves into their content but don't want to have to shoot themselves,” Roman says.

Courtesy of Google

This specific style of social-first, selfie deepfake is reminiscent of a quintessential feature from OpenAI’s now-defunct Sora app—rather than cameos or characters, Google calls them avatars. These avatars are also available through the Gemini app and YouTube. Google announced the new feature at its annual I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California.

Google launched Flow last year under its experimental Labs division. “Google has never had a product line for creative work before,” Roman says. “Productivity, definitely. Developers, absolutely. Video consumption, yes. Not for creative work.” He sees this as Google’s attempt to build tools for the next generation of creators.

Similar to other announcements from Google I/O surrounding Google Search, many of the new changes to Flow are part of the company’s larger attempt to make AI agents, essentially automated software taskmasters, and vibe coding, building bespoke features with natural language prompts to AI, more mainstream for a broader audience. For example, users can repeat custom instructions when generating videos and create automated workflows that sort similarly styled clips into folders.

Courtesy of Google