Google Veo 3.1 will generate social-ready vertical videos in Gemini
Google Gemini — the tech giant's generative AI video model — is launching the ability to generate social media-ready vertical video. That's all well and good, but it raises the question: Does that mean even more AI slop?
Google Veo is widely regarded as the leading AI video model (different versions of Veo claim the top four spots on LMArena's text-to-video leaderboard), so the answer is almost certainly yes.
Google announced this week that Veo 3.1 — the latest version of Gemini's text-to-video generator — could now generate "social-ready 9:16 videos directly." In other words, the videos are generated with the vertical, scroll-ready format that you see on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels.
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"Designed for mobile-first applications, this mode delivers faster results and optimized composition by generating full-frame vertical video rather than cropping from landscape," read a statement from Google.
The online world is increasingly populated by AI-generated vertical video, some of which is the much-maligned slop. Meta, for instance, launched Vibes, a social site entirely dedicated to generating and scrolling AI videos. AI critics call it an "infinite slop machine."
It tracks that Google would give users the ability to generate social-ready video — people want it — but it might not make your scrolling experience any better.
Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You'll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).
