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Justin Pot is a freelance journalist who helps people get more out of technology.
This week Google added Veo 2 to YouTube Shorts and—wow, this article is already gibberish. Let me back up.
YouTube Shorts is YouTube’s TikTok knockoff competitor. Veo2 is Google’s AI tool for generating videos. As of this week, you can use that AI to make clips for YouTube Shorts. This innovative and revolutionary change will forever alter the vertical videos most people scroll past so they can find the thing they actually wanted to watch.
According to a confusingly worded announcement post, you can now create clips to add to your Shorts simply by typing a sentence. Anyone can create a Short right in the YouTube mobile app either by combining footage already saved to their phone or by recording directly. Now there’s a third option: generating horrifying footage using AI.
“Need a specific scene but don’t have the right footage?” the post asks. “Simply use a text prompt to generate a video clip that fits perfectly into your narrative, or create a whole new world of content.”
I can’t think of any place less appealing than a “whole new world of content.” The very phrase conjures up mental images of a digital purgatory, an endless void of placeholder content where the unworthy are sent to after a life lived passively consuming.
So naturally I wanted to try this out.
I fired up the YouTube application on my phone found that the feature is a little buried. To generate a clip, you need to click the Add button in the bottom-left corner and then—instead of clicking one of the photos or videos on your phone—tap the Create button at the top of the screen. After that, you can type your prompt and tap Create.
You’ll see four thumbnails—tap one and the AI will generate a clip for you. This will be added to your timeline, meaning you can edit it into the rest of the Short however you like.
I played around with this a few times, mostly with cats eating planets (I wanted to see it). The results were not particularly convincing from a feline or astronomical perspective—I’d say it resembled the feeling of a fading memory of a dream more than actual video footage—but I certainly ended up with a video that included the elements I described.
There’s one more way you can use these videos—as an animated background for your Shorts. To do this, tap the down arrow on the toolbar to expand it, tap the Green Screen option, then tap the AI sparkle instead of one of your photos. As before, you will be given four thumbnails to choose from—the one you choose will become a video. You can then record yourself talking as the video loops in the background. Honestly, this seems like a decent use for AI—a quick and disposable visual flare for a video that is also quick and disposable.
For what’s it’s worth, we have an article about how to hide YouTube Shorts from your feed, as does seemingly every other website on the internet. I wonder why that is.
Justin Pot is a freelance journalist who helps people get more out of technology.
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