A project by Google and the Harley-Davidson Museum hints at some potential applications for the former’s Veo GenAI video tool in music. Veo was used to animate the still photographs from the museum’s archive, with Google’s Gemini AI adding text and audio commentary for each animated pic.
“Archival photos convey so much about people, their attitudes, determination and energy. When we see the people in motion, it adds more emotion and connection,” said the museum’s manager of archives and heritage services Bill Jackson.
This is the first in a new ‘Moving Archives’ initiative from Google designed to show off Veo and Gemini’s capabilities. Now, think about any artist (or photographer, venue, music brand etc) with their own archive of photos that might suit this treatment…
YouTube also recently announced that the latest version of Veo, v3, will be coming to YouTube Shorts this summer, so that could also be interesting for animated music photos.