Holy crap: AI video just took a startling leap in realism. Are we doomed?

MAY 29, 2025 12:58 PM

Last week, Google introduced Veo 3, its newest video generation model that can create 8-second clips with synchronized sound effects and audio dialog—a first for the company's AI tools. The model, which generates videos at 720p resolution (based on text descriptions called "prompts" or still image inputs), represents what may be the most capable consumer video generator to date, bringing video synthesis close to a point where it is becoming very difficult to distinguish between "authentic" and AI-generated media.

Google also launched Flow, an online AI filmmaking tool that combines Veo 3 with the company's Imagen 4 image generator and Gemini language model, allowing creators to describe scenes in natural language and manage characters, locations, and visual styles in a web interface.

Both tools are now available to US subscribers of Google AI Ultra, a plan that costs $250 a month and comes with 12,500 credits. Veo 3 videos cost 150 credits per generation, allowing 83 videos on that plan before you run out. Extra credits are available for the price of 1 cent per credit in blocks of $25, $50, or $200. That comes out to about $1.50 per video generation. But is the price worth it? We ran some tests with various prompts to see what this technology is truly capable of.

How does Veo work?

Like other modern video generation models, Veo 3 is built on diffusion technology—the same approach that powers image generators like Stable Diffusion and Flux. The training process works by taking real videos and progressively adding noise to them until they become pure static, then teaching a neural network to reverse this process step by step. During generation, Veo 3 starts with random noise and a text prompt, then iteratively refines that noise into a coherent video that matches the description.

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https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/05/ai-video-just-took-a-startling-leap-in-realism-are-we-doomed/


Comment: I love tech, I have always loved tech since I was a toddler in the 1950's. But these videos just scared the crap out of me..
If there was ever a "Must see tv" moment, then the ones in this article are them.