Google Photos prepares for major ‘video remix’ AI upgrade

Important points

• Google Photos is testing a new ‘Saba’ feature that will rename the existing ‘Remix’ button to ‘Photo Remix’
• This change, along with a new YouTube-like play button overlaid with Google’s familiar Sparkle icon, strongly hints that Saba is a new “video remix” tool that uses generative AI to turn existing clips into new videos.
• The supporting feature code does not yet exist in your app.

Google Photos is preparing a major AI-powered upgrade that will let you edit and transform your video clips in a variety of creative ways.

Recently discovered code in the Google Photos Android app reveals the first steps towards implementing what is likely to be a video version of the popular Photo Remix feature.

Hidden assets refer to a new video remix feature currently codenamed “Saba.” This feature converts videos in response to text-based or voice commands, likely leveraging recently released features. gemini omni video model.

Gemini Omni is Google’s latest multimodal video generation model that provides “conversation editing” and “multimodal context” for video input. For example, you can use natural language to tell it to turn one of your personal videos into a claymation-style animation. At the same time, its inherent context awareness allows it to apply effects to specific events in the footage while leaving other parts unchanged.

Preparation work for this feature was discovered by a reputable forensic app specialist assemble debugMr. Google Photos[作成]I discovered a new Soba button on my tab. It features a YouTube-like video icon with Google’s familiar Gemini “shine” logo in the corner. The app doesn’t yet contain the code needed to run this feature, but it does provide a clue as to what Google has planned for Soba, and it’s a playbook we’ve seen before.

Photo remix upgrades your video

According to internal test strings, when Saba is enabled, the existing “Remix” button used for AI photo editing will be renamed to “Photo Remix”. This is probably to avoid confusion with the new “Video Remix” feature. Google’s basic app instructions confirm this switch. A certain “Saba” code triggers the standard “Remix” button, which renames itself to “Photo Remix”. You can see the changed button descriptions in AssembleDebug. original disassembly.

Additionally, the Soba icon shown above follows the same design language that Google uses for its Photo Remix feature, except the portrait image is replaced with a video play button.

Although there is no internal label explicitly calling this feature a “video remix,” these clues strongly suggest that Saba will be released as a video equivalent to the current photo remix feature. While Photo remix uses the Nano Banana model for photo editing, Saba (or “Video remix”) may use Gemini Omni to do the same for videos, potentially making conversational video editing features available directly within the Google Photos app.

Note that the new video remix feature is different from Google’s current “photo to video” service, which converts still images into video clips. Video Remix takes an existing video clip as input and produces a modified video as output.

Don’t expect a full Gemini Omni from Google Photos

However, if Google adopts a similar strategy to the original (Photo) Remix feature, don’t expect Gemini Omni’s full power to be unleashed on Google Photos. In fact, you may not see conversational features at all. Photo remix released In July 2025, the feature set was significantly limited to only four presets available to users. This has expanded to a total of 13 after just five months, but it’s still a long way from the essentially unlimited freeform editing capabilities that Nano Banana offers.

Given this cautious approach to Photo Remix, I expect to see a similarly limited Video Remix feature launch, at least initially, to keep the feature simple and safe to use. However, power users will probably be overwhelmed. We don’t know the final implementation yet, but we expect it to offer a few carefully selected presets rather than the full conversational editing capabilities of Gemini Omni.

We will keep an eye on future updates to Google Photos.

forbesGoogle AI Ultra Warning: Upgrading may invalidate your free trialby paul moncktonforbesGoogle announced Gemini Spark but left an unpleasant warningby paul monckton