Hey there,

Creating any kind of film or video can be extremely intimidating. Whether you are creating a creative short film or a product video, going from an idea to a finished product isn’t easy. Enter Google Flow. This AI-powered tool aims to streamline the filmmaking process, making it much more accessible for professionals and amateurs alike. 

If you’ve never heard of Flow then you aren’t alone. Google announced this product during their annual Google I/O event and while I covered it in my Google I/O 2025 recap, I largely forgot about it and moved on to the more pressing topics like the new 2.5 Pro model. This was a big mistake on my end. Google Flow is one of the coolest AI products I’ve ever worked with. 

What Exactly is Google Flow?

Flow is an AI video and filmmaking tool that can produce incredibly detailed scenes and stories through natural language. It’s meant to give people with no experience (me!) the ability to generate, edit, and share professional-looking content while also being a tool that filmmakers can use.

Flow isn’t just a feature of the Gemini App. Instead, this standalone product combines Veo 2 & 3 (Google’s video generation models), Imagen 4 (image generation model), and the power of an editing tool. This array of features means that you can do more than just create a short 8-second video. Now you can create projects that can constantly be expanded while still having scene and detail continuity. 

Accessing Flow

Unfortunately there is no free version of Flow. While the individual components of Flow like Imagen 4 and Veo 3 can be accessed for free, the combined experience isn’t. You’ll need to have either the Google AI Pro or Google AI Ultra plans to make your AI films with Flow. I want to note that the Pro plan offers the first month free so you could always sign up and try Flow for a month!

The Fundamentals of Flow: 

In Flow, your videos are created within a project. This structured approach is incredibly helpful, as it means all the scenes, iterations, and ideas for a specific video stay neatly organized in one place. Once you’ve created a project, you can start prompting!

Prompting Your Vision:

Just like other generative AI tools, prompting is the core of creating with Flow. You’ll kick things off by describing your scene in detail. Things like background, actions, character details, camera angles, mood, and even larger story points will all help shape your video. You’ll want to be as specific as possible, if you can picture it, try to describe it. 

Generating Your Scene: 

One of the best features of Flow is that it will create multiple responses to each prompt. This is helpful for a few reasons. 

• Quality Control: It allows you to choose the highest-quality option right off the bat. As we all know, AI can be unpredictable so having two options helps you move past the odd outputs you may get. 

• Creative Exploration: Personally I love this feature because it can spark your creativity by showing variations you didn’t ask for, pushing your initial idea in new directions. 

• Refinement: I’ve found that filmmaking in Flow is rarely a one-shot deal. You’ll often need to provide feedback and generate new versions. The need for refinement will likely lessen over time as you get better at using Flow but it's essential in the beginning. 

Building a Narrative: The "Extend" Feature

What makes Flow different from Veo 3 in Gemini or Sora in ChatGPT is that you aren’t just creating an isolated clip. Instead you can combine videos into one scene and more importantly, you can extend them. The idea around “Extend” is simple. Expand on a video (or series of videos) without losing the continuity of previous videos. Flow takes the visual and contextual information from your existing scene and uses it to seamlessly generate the next segment. Character position, camera movement, and detail all remain consistent between video clips, allowing you to build longer, more focused narratives.

Extending a scene is easy: just click the “+” on your timeline and select “Extend”. You can then enter your next prompt and watch as Flow brings your idea to life. 

Flow in Action: 

Talking about a tool like Flow can’t do it justice so I want to show a couple examples of what I’ve created. 

The first is a short scene I put together that follows a man running on rooftops before he launches himself into the sky and flies away. The full video gives big superhero vibes as he learns to fly. 

In the second video I had Gemini create an image of a car and then used that image to create a short scene of it driving through the mountains. You can upload your own files for this process to create meaningful videos.

Flow TV

While my creations were a bit simple, Flow offers hundreds of more complex examples to explore. Flow TV has been specifically created to showcase some of the incredible videos you can create. If you’re still unsure if Flow is something you should check out, I highly recommend watching Flow TV for a couple of minutes to see what the platform can do. 

My Thoughts on Flow

If it wasn’t clear from my earlier comments, I love Flow! This product hasn’t been getting nearly enough attention in the AI space. Many of the people I’ve talked to haven’t used or even heard of Flow which is such a shame. 

While the tool is great, there are some limitations I wanted to mention. The biggest issue is that you can’t directly save a “Scene” within Flow. I found it odd that the videos you create will save within a project but not the scenes themselves. Also it's important to note that I definitely generated plenty of useless videos. Like all AI-generated content (videos and images especially), there will always be some oddities and content that can’t be used. 

I’d recommend checking out Google Flow for yourselves!