Unlock next level Shorts with new creation tools
Jul 23, 2025 – [[read-time]] minute read
We’re sharing some of our newest creation tools to make bringing your ideas to life on YouTube Shorts even easier and more fun.
Transform photos into videos: Bring your story to life with Photo to video, which instantly turns a picture from your camera roll into a video. Just select your image, choose a creative suggestion, and watch your memories come alive. For instance, with Photo to video you can add movement to landscape photos, animate pictures of everyday photos, or bring group photos to life. This is rolling out now and over the next week, free of charge, in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with more regions coming later this year.
Play with new effects: Dive into a constantly refreshing world of effects. Our latest generative effects can dynamically transform your doodles into fun images and turn your selfies into unique videos, like swimming underwater, twinning with a lookalike sibling, and more. Find these and other effects by navigating to the Effects ✨icon in the Shorts camera, and tap on AI to browse all generative effects. We’ll be expanding to more creators globally in the coming weeks.
Photo to video and generative effects are powered by Veo 2, and we’re excited to bring Veo 3 to YouTube Shorts later this summer!
P.S. Google Photos is also launching a photo to video feature, adding to our suite of similar tools which also includes Gemini.
Discover our latest creation tools in AI playground: AI playground is your new home for creation. Inside, you'll find our latest gen AI creation tools, a gallery of inspirational examples, and pre-filled prompts to help you instantly generate videos, images, music, and more. Find AI playground by tapping the create button and then the sparkle icon in the top right corner. It’s available now for everyone in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to start.
Across these tools, we use SynthID watermarks and clear labels to indicate that these creations were generated with AI.
While these tools are here to make creating even more fun, remember that your unique creativity is what truly makes Shorts shine! For more details on how to use these features, check out our post.