Veo 2 Scores Over Rivals

We have already noted that Sam Altman feels video is the key to achieve AGI. Sora heralds OpenAI’s debut in this field. The rival company Google strikes back with two AI video models — Veo 2 and Imagen 3. These are not available for public now but will be available for public by early 2025. In internal testing Veo outperforms competitors (China’s Kling, Meta’s Moviegen and OpenAI’s Sora). Veo scores over the competitors in terms prompt response and quality.

Veo excels in creating nature and animal related clips. It captures detailed movement. Veo 2 delivers life-like visuals with better realism. It leverages physics while depicting movements.

Though not perfect, it shows significant improvement over current state-of-the -art models.

Sora has more control options and longer clips. It is, therefore, not comparable to Veo 2. However, Veo 2 leaves all the Chinese models far behind. Google considers the Chinese model Kling its biggest competitor. Google has the advantage of owning YouTube, and that facilitates the training of these models as far as physics is concerned. Veo 2 reproduces a gymnast’s routine. It shows its grasp over human movement. Sora is not capable of modelling complex movements.

Veo 2 supports 4K resolution and can produce videos longer than 2 minutes. It is at present restricted to 720p and eight seconds on the experimental platform. It scores over Sora in resolution and video duration.

The simultaneous release of foundation model Genie 2 capable of generating 3 D environments is another significant development. Genie 2 is critical for the training of embodied AI agents. It accelerates the pace of Google’s AGI vision.

Thus 2025 will be the year of advanced world models, and Google leads here. Google’s acquisition of DeepMind is a strategic decision that puts Google much ahead in the race to AGI. Elon Musk rightly calls this as if DeepMind has acquired Google.

Google these days has rejuvenated itself and is acting like a startup. Its releases are impressive — Gemini 2, Willow, GenCast and updates to NotebookM.