How to Get the Most Out of Google’s Free AI Studio

 How to Get the Most Out of Google’s Free AI Studio

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you find the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.

Google’s AI Studio and Labs let you experiment with new AI tools for free. I love how these digital sandboxes — like the one from Hugging Face — let you try out creative new uses for AI. You can play around, and then download and share what you create without having to master a complicated new platform. Read on for a few Google AI experiments to try. All are free, fast, and easy to use.

1. Transform an image

Upload a photo and use Gemini’s AI Studio image generation to transform it with prompts. Iterate over your original image until you get a version you like. The model understands natural language, so you don’t have to master the prompt language.

2. Generate AI Voice Conversations

AI-generated voices are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from human voices. If you’re stumped, try Generate Speech in AI Studio or Google’s NotebookLM.

How to use Generate Speech in Google’s AI Studio

Paste into text for narration or for a conversation between two people

Open the Settings tab to choose from 30 AI voices. Each is labeled with a characteristic—e.g., excited, gravelly, or mature.

Click Run to generate the conversation. Optionally adjust the playback speed.

If you want to keep it, download the file, or paste it into a separate text to try again.

Example: A silly 90-second chat between two violinists that I scripted with Gemini and quickly rendered with this Generate Speech tool.

Use case: Create a narration track for an instructional video. ElevenLabs has a better business model for this, but AI Studio is free, easy, and fast.

Alternatives

If you’re on a paid plan, Google’s Gemini AI app can now also generate audio overviews from files you upload.

Google’s free NotebookLM has a new mobile app, and now lets you generate audio conversations in any of 50 languages. Unlike Generate Speech in AI Studio, NotebookLM audio overviews summarize your content, not the words as they’re written. Here’s why NotebookLM is so useful.

Google’s Illuminate lets you generate, listen to, share, and download AI conversations about research papers and famous books. For example, here’s an audio chat about David Copperfield. A little dry to listen to, but still useful.

3. Create a GIF

Try Magical Gif Maker, one of the 20 showcase apps in AI Studio’s Build section. Try creating a moving visual that represents the name of your publication, group, or event. I experimented with kinetic text and word art. Also worth trying in Build AI Studio: Flashcard Maker, Video to Learning App, and Map Planner.

Optional: You can also create a static image with Google’s Imagen 3 or the new Imagen 4. Write a short prompt and choose your preferred aspect ratio. So far, I’ve been loving Ideogram (why I like it) and ChatGPT’s new image engine.

4. Generate a short video

Google’s Veo 2 and Flow let you generate short video clips for free almost instantly with a prompt. Create a clip to add liveliness or humor to a presentation, or create a visual metaphor to help explain something. Here are 25 other quick ideas for how you can use short AI-generated video scenes.

How to Create a Video Clip with Veo 2

Choose a length (5 to 8 seconds) and choose horizontal or vertical orientation

Write a prompt and optionally upload a photo to indicate the visual direction

Example: Take a look at the 5-second video I generated from the parakeet photo I started with and the photo with Veo 2.

Tip: Convert short video clips to gifs for free with Ezgif or Giphy. Unlike video files, gifs are easy to share and auto-play in emails or presentations.

What's next: Remarkably lively clips made with Google's new Veo 3 model went viral this week. These AI-generated visuals - with sound - are available for now on the $250/month(!) plan, so try Veo 2 for free.

5. Explain things with lots of little cats

This playful mini app uses adorable cat illustrations to create short, step-by-step visual guides to explain any concept, from how a violin works to the concept behind the matrix.

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you find the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.

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