Google’s Gemini chatbot gets upgraded image creation tools

Google’s Gemini chatbot app now lets you modify both AI-generated images and images uploaded from your phone or computer, Google announced in a blog post Wednesday.

Native image editing in Gemini will start rolling out gradually today, expanding to more people in over 45 languages and most countries in the coming weeks.

The launch follows on the heels of the AI image editing model Google piloted in its AI Studio platform in March, which went viral for its controversial ability to remove watermarks from any image. Similar to ChatGPT’s recently upgraded image editing tool, Gemini’s newfangled native image editor can in theory achieve better results than standalone AI image generators.

Gemini now offers a “multi-step” editing flow that delivers what Google describes as “richer, more contextual” responses to each prompt with text and images integrated. You can change the background in images, replace objects, add elements, and more within the Gemini platform flow.

“For example, you can upload a personal photo and prompt Gemini to generate an image of what you’d look like with different hair colors,” explains Google in a blog post. “[Or] you could ask Gemini to create a first draft of a bedtime story about dragons and provide images to go along with the story.”

If this sounds like a deepfake risk, well, that’s reasonable. To allay fears, images created or edited with Gemini’s native image generation will include an invisible watermark, according to Google. The company is also “experimenting” with visible watermarks on all Gemini-generated images.