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Google Meet is now available on CarPlay

We’re excited to announce Google Meet for Apple CarPlay, allowing on-the-go professionals to stay connected hands-free and join meetings safely while on the road.

With this update, users can now access Google Meet directly from their car's dashboard. This feature is designed to provide a seamless transition from your mobile iOS device to your vehicle, ensuring you never miss an important discussion. Whether you are commuting or traveling between appointments, you can now join meetings with a single tap, view your upcoming schedule, and participate in audio-only calls to maintain focus on driving.

Please note that when you join a meeting, your camera is turned off and you won’t see the incoming video content. You will hear the audio from the meeting and have audio input access from your microphone.

Android Auto users can expect a version of Meet for Android Auto soon.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be ON by default for users with the Google Meet app installed on their iPhone. To use it, simply connect your iPhone to a CarPlay-compatible vehicle. Visit the Help Center to learn more.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

Export Google Vids directly to YouTube

You can now publish the videos you create in Google Vids directly to YouTube. This saves you a few steps - previously you would export the project as an MP4 file, then go to YouTube to upload the file.

Whether you are creating marketing videos, training materials, or educational content, this feature reduces manual effort and simplifies the publishing process.

To maintain security and provide creative control, all exported videos are initially set to Private. You can review the content in YouTube Studio before choosing to set the visibility to Public or Unlisted.

Use the new option in the File menu to export your video directly to YouTube.

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be available by default to organizations with both YouTube and Google Vids enabled. The feature will not be visible in domains where YouTube is disabled, or “Strict” or “Moderate” restricted modes are enforced. Access to YouTube can be controlled at the domain/OU/group level. Visit the Help Center to learn more
  • End users: Try the feature in Google Vids today. Visit the Help Center to learn more about exporting your vids.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

Record your screen directly from Chrome with the Google Vids Screen Recorder Chrome Extension

You can now quickly record your screen from any browser window using the new Google Vids Screen Recorder Chrome extension. Instead of having to open Google Vids to access recording functionality, you can now initiate a recording with a single click right from the Chrome extensions toolbar.

This is available at no additional cost to Google Workspace customers and anyone with a personal Google account.

Whether you are capturing a quick walkthrough, a bug report, or a presentation, this extension simplifies the creation process by allowing you to record from any tab without interrupting your workflow. You can record videos up to 30 minutes in length, making it easy to capture thorough walkthroughs or deep dives. Once your recording is complete, you can preview it and then seamlessly open it in Vids to edit and share like any other video.

Quickly record your screen from any browser window

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be available by default if your organization has Google Vids enabled. To facilitate a smoother rollout, admins can force-install the extension and auto-pin it to the Chrome extensions toolbar for their users via the Admin console.
  • End users: If your admin hasn’t already installed the extension for you, navigate to the Chrome Web Store to add the extension to your browser. If your admin has not pinned it for you, we recommend pinning the extension to your toolbar for the fastest access.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

Direct an avatar to speak and act anywhere with a consistent face and voice

AI Avatars in Google Vids can deliver your message with a consistent face and voice throughout a video, and they are preferred 5x more often than those on other platforms.

Today we’re excited to announce you can now place avatars in different scenes and have them interact with objects you specify, like your newly released product or a piece of safety equipment. Their faces and voices will remain consistent as you generate different scenes.

You can use avatars in scenarios like:

  1. Annual training: Avatars can explain requirements in training videos while in relevant settings.
  2. Company announcement: Place an avatar in your office by uploading an image.
  3. Sales pitch: Upload an image of your product and direct your avatar to showcase it.

Prompt
He picks up the phone in the phone booth, and says "Whatever your story is, Avatars can tell it in Google Vids!" into the phone as if on a call.



Veo Generation

When generating avatars, users will have the ability to:

  • Control actions: Instruct your avatar to walk, talk, and use objects simply by typing a prompt.
  • Use reference images: Upload two additional images to direct your avatar in customized locations or to use unique objects relevant to your video.
  • Choose an avatar: Select a speaker that provides consistency across every generation.
Direct avatar experience
Currently, this feature is only available to Workspace accounts set to English.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
Note: Workspace customers will get promotional access to higher usage limits of Veo 3.1 avatars in Vids, allowing users to experiment with these features. Per-user usage limits will apply afterward; we’ll provide more information in a future update prior to any changes.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business Starter **, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise Starter **, Standard, and Plus
  • Essentials Starter, Enterprise Essentials, and Enterprise Essentials Plus
  • Nonprofits**
  • Education Plus** and Teaching and Learning add-on**
  • Google AI Pro for Education add-on
  • Google AI Pro and Ultra
**For a limited time, at least through May 31, 2026, Business Starter, Enterprise Starter, Nonprofit, Education Plus, and Teaching and Learning add-on accounts can access generative AI features in Vids. Learn about Google Vids availability.

Resources

Create and refine custom avatars in Google Vids

AI Avatars in Google Vids provide high-quality speakers preferred five times more often than those on other platforms. Now you can customize and refine these avatars to match your brand and message, with Nano Banana 2.

Why use custom avatars?

  1. Unique Branding: Build an exclusive look that represents your specific team or organization.
  2. Global Localization: Adjust appearance and background to fit specific regional locales.
  3. Tailored Imagery: Stylize outfits—such as a tuxedo—to match the specific tone of your video.

 Googler avatar


Astronaut avatar

Complete Creative Control

  • Guided Generation: Use a simple prompt or the guided form to create your initial avatar.
  • Easy Refinement: Request specific tweaks like adding glasses, hats, or changing locations.
  • Vocal Variety: Choose from seven available voices to seamlessly pair with your custom visuals.
Custom Avatar user experience

Getting started

Note: Workspace customers will get promotional access to higher usage limits of avatars in Vids, allowing users to experiment with these features. Per-user usage limits will apply afterward; we’ll provide more information in a future update prior to any changes.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business: Business Starter**, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Starter**, Standard, and Plus
  • Education: Education Plus**
  • Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
  • Other Editions: Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, and Enterprise Essentials Plus; Nonprofits**
  • AI Add-ons: AI Ultra Access; AI Expanded Access; Google AI Pro for Education
  • Other Add-ons: Teaching and Learning**
**For a limited time, at least through May 31, 2026, Business Starter, Enterprise Starter, Nonprofit, Education Plus, and Teaching and Learning add-on accounts can access generative AI features in Vids. Learn about Google Vids availability

Resources

Gemma 4: Expanding the Gemmaverse with Apache 2.0

by Nia Castelly & amanda casari, Google Open Source & Olivier Lacombe, Google DeepMind

Gemma 4: Expanding the Gemmaverse with Apache 2.0

For over 20 years, Google has maintained an unwavering commitment to the open-source community. Our belief has been simple: open technology is good for our company, good for our users, and good for our world. This commitment to fostering collaborative learning and rigorous testing has consistently proven more effective than pursuing isolated improvements. It's been our approach ever since the 2005 launch of Google Summer of Code, and through our open-sourcing of Kubernetes, Android, and Go, and it remains central to our ongoing, daily work alongside maintainers and organizations.

Today, we are taking a significant step forward in that journey. Since first launch, the community has downloaded Gemma models over 400 million times and built a vibrant universe of over 100,000 inspiring variants, known in the community as the Gemmaverse.

The release of Gemma 4 under the Apache 2.0 license — our most capable open models ranging from edge devices to 31B parameters — provides cutting-edge AI models for this community of developers. The industry-standard Apache license broadens the horizon for Gemma 4's applicability and usefulness, providing well-understood terms for modification, reuse, and further development.

A long legacy of open research

We are committed to making helpful, accessible AI technology and research so that everyone can innovate and grow. That's why many of our innovations are freely available, easy to deploy, and useful to developers across the globe. We have a long history of making our foundational machine-learning research, including word2vec, Jax, and the seminal Transformers paper, publicly available for anyone to use and study.

We accelerated this commitment last year. By sharing models that interpret complex genomic data and identify tumor variants, we contributed to the "magic cycle" of research breakthroughs that translate into real-world impact. This week, however, marks a pivotal moment — Gemma 4 models are the first in the Gemmaverse to be released under the OSI-approved Apache 2.0 license.

Empowering developers and researchers to deliver breakthrough innovations

Since we first launched Gemma in 2024, the community of early adopters has grown into a vast ecosystem of builders, researchers, and problem solvers. Gemma is already supporting sovereign digital infrastructure, from automating state licensing in Ukraine to scaling Project Navarasa across India's 22 official languages. And we know that developers need autonomy, control, and clarity in licensing for further AI innovation to reach its full potential.

Gemma 4 brings three essential elements of free and open-source software directly to the community:

  • Autonomy: By letting people build on and modify the Gemma 4 models, we are empowering researchers and developers with the freedom to advance their own breakthrough innovations however they see fit.
  • Control: We understand that many developers require precise control over their development and deployment environments. Gemma 4 allows for local, private execution that doesn't rely on cloud-only infrastructure.
  • Clarity: By applying the industry-standard Apache 2.0 license terms, we are providing clarity about developers' rights and responsibilities so that they can build freely and confidently from the ground up without the need to navigate prescriptive terms of service.

Building together to drive real-world impact

Gemma 4, as a release, is an invitation. Whether you are a scientific researcher exploring the language of dolphins, an industry developer building the next generation of open AI agents, or a public institution looking to provide more effective, efficient, and localized services to your citizens, Google is excited to continue building with you. The Gemmaverse is your playground, and with Apache 2.0, the possibilities are more boundless than ever.

We can't wait to see what you build.