Joe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google lets you place yourself in AI videos by creating a virtual avatar representation.
- Right now, you’re only able to use your own avatar to make videos with Gemini Omni.
- Some cryptic new text strings hint at the future ability to share your avatar with other Gemini users.
Have you had the chance yet to try making your own virtual avatar with Gemini Omni? It’s been a little over a month now since we saw the feature start rolling out widely, giving Gemini users the chance to capture their likenesses and generate videos featuring AI versions of themselves. The results are pretty impressive, but what happens when you get bored thinking up new scenarios for your own avatar to star in? Well, if we’re reading our latest find correctly, you may soon have the opportunity to play with your friends’ avatars, as well.
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Looking through version 17.38.5.sa.arm64 of the Google app for Android, we spotted a couple new text strings that got our attention:
Code
When someone shares their ginger with you, it will appear here.
No other gingers On first read, that’s pretty weird, right? What is this “sharing their ginger” business? Let’s break down what we’re seeing here.
First up, “robin” is a codeword Google’s been using for its AI since back before Gemini was even Gemini. And then we have have two references to “shared avatars” in those string labels. So far, that feels reasonably straightforward.
But then there’s what we can’t read as anything but a reference to the Big Hero 6 character Wasabi-No-Ginger. What they have to do with any of this isn’t immediately clear to us — if you’re more tuned in to the lore behind the character and have a theory, let us know down in the comments. All we know is that if you swap out “ginger” as a placeholder for “avatar” in these two lines, they suddenly make a lot more sense.
Taking that all in, this feels like the first sign we’re seeing of a new system to allow Gemini users to share their avatar creations with others — and presumably use them to create new videos with Omni. Obviously, this is not something you’re going to want to give just anyone access to, and we’ll be curious to see what kind of restrictions Google puts in place on how you’re able to share avatars and on what users are able to do with avatars shared with them.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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