Google has released a free consumer version of the Veo-powered Vids generative video creation and editing tool that debuted in November 2024 as part of the Google Workspace productivity suite, a subscription product starting at $7 per month for individual users. Subscribers will continue to have access to a more full-featured Vids app, which has been updated with AI avatars, image-to-video capability and automatic transcript trimming that removes “filler words and awkward pauses with just a few clicks.” But the free tier provides basic AI-enhanced editing and video creation using templates that casual users will no doubt find helpful.

The free edition “can create polished video content,” Google explains in a Workspace blog post, seeking to prove it with a new Vids on Vids instructional series on YouTube, the social sharing platform whose creators the basic edition of Vids seems designed to serve.

The templates available on the free tier are “categorized by purpose” and “not just generic layouts,” Google’s Gemini chatbot informs us, explaining “they are often structured around specific use cases, similar to templates you’d find in Google Slides.” Category examples include how-to guides, training videos, product demos and celebrations.

Although Google hasn’t shared a precise figure, reports say there are more than 50 templates, which include placeholders for things like text, images and video, access to a stock library of royalty-free images and clips and pre-selected fonts and color schemes.

“It’s geared toward helping you quickly pull together video presentations with a host of AI video editing and creation tools, including a feature to help you create a storyboard with suggested scenes, stock images, and background music,” writes The Verge. Designed for beginners, there is no generative capability in the free app.

For that, you will need to use a paid version, which now provides “the ability to have an AI-generated avatar to deliver a message on your behalf,” The Verge reports, adding that the premium update allows users to “select one of 12 pre-made avatars, each of which has a different appearance and voice, and then add your script.”

New paid features include image-to-video powered by Veo 3, which can produce contextual audio, a capability that sets it apart from other turnkey AI video models. “With this model, users can provide prompts to generate background sounds like restaurant conversations, birdsong, city traffic, or character dialogue,” writes SiliconANGLE. “It can also produce rich, creative narrative visuals to accompany the sound design.”

Google says there are now more than 1 million monthly active users for Vids, which means there will be more improvements to come as the Alphabet company continues to update it for Workspace’s 3 billion productivity users worldwide.