I cloned myself with Gemini Omni in 15 minutes (and it's terrifyingly good) Summary — How I AI

Summary

In this episode of 'How I AI,' host Claire Ho conducts a live experiment to create an AI video avatar of herself using Google Flow and the new Gemini Omni video generation model, completing the entire process in roughly 15 minutes. She begins by scanning a QR code to take photos of her face from multiple angles, which Flow uses to generate a personalized avatar. Despite having failed at this process on a previous attempt, the avatar generation succeeds this time, producing what she describes as a 'fish eye lens version' of herself.

Using Flow's built-in AI assistant, Claire collaborates with the tool to brainstorm a storyboard for a hype video for her podcast. She describes her desired aesthetic — a dark home office with green walls, AI books, posters, and a 'hacker vibe' — and the AI generates a seven-scene storyboard including shots like extreme close-ups of keyboard typing, a spinning chair reveal, a heads-up display overlay, and a call-to-action segment. She then generates videos for each scene by referencing her avatar character, navigating a minor mistake where she accidentally generated images instead of videos.

The resulting videos show mixed but impressive results. Roughly 50% of the time the avatar closely resembles Claire's actual face, capturing details like her sun damage and side profiles. However, inconsistencies emerge across scenes, including varying background colors, changing books on shelves, and anachronistic AI tropes like a giant iPad showing schematics. One scene depicting her laughing is described as deep in the 'uncanny valley.' After stitching the best video clips together in Flow's in-browser editor, she premieres the final one-minute hype video and expresses genuine excitement about the outcome.

Claire reflects on the broader significance of generative video AI, noting that it enables her — someone without video production skills — to solo-produce creative content she never could have before. She concludes that while the result is roughly 50% polished, achieving it with no prior tool knowledge in 15 minutes represents a meaningful milestone in accessible AI-driven content creation.

Key Insights

Claire notes that generative video AI unlocks creative abilities she previously lacked entirely — she says she would never have been able to solo-produce a hype video before, as she wouldn't know how to frame it, brainstorm it, or block it.

Claire observes that the avatar captured background details from her photo session — including her poster — because those objects were visible behind her when she took the reference photos, showing that the model incorporates environmental context from avatar capture.

Claire finds that character consistency is a significant weakness, noting that approximately 50% of the time the avatar resembles her actual face and 50% of the time it looks like an uncanny version, with background elements like shelf books and wall color also changing between scenes.

Claire points out that video generation models default to early-2000s stereotypes of what 'impressive AI technology' looks like — she is shown holding a 24-inch iPad displaying a church schematic and getting a heads-up display overlaid on her face while apparently coding a robot.

Claire argues that the entire workflow — recording her avatar, learning the tool, building a storyboard, generating all videos, and stitching them together — took roughly 15 minutes total, and she considers the 50%-polished result a genuine success given zero prior knowledge of the tool.

I cloned myself with Gemini Omni in 15 minutes (and it's terrifyingly good)

Summary

Key Insights

Topics

Get AI summaries delivered to your inbox