Key Takeaways
- Google Photos is testing a new “Soba” feature that renames the existing “Remix” button to “Photo Remix”
- This change, along with a new YouTube-like play button overlaid with Google’s familiar Sparkle icon, strongly suggests that Soba is a new “Video Remix” tool that will transform existing clips into new videos using generative AI.
- The supporting feature code isn’t present in the app yet.
Google Photos is preparing a massive AI-powered upgrade that could edit and transform your video clips in a variety of creative ways.
Recently discovered code in the Google Photos Android app reveals the first steps toward implementing the feature that looks set to become the video counterpart to the popular Photo Remix feature.
Hidden assets point to a new Video Remix feature, currently codenamed “Soba,” that will transform your videos in response to text-based or spoken commands, most likely by leveraging the recently released Gemini Omni video model.
Gemini Omni is Google’s latest multimodal video-generation model that offers “conversational editing” and “multimodal context” for video input. For example, you could use natural language to tell it to transform one of your personal videos into a claymation-style animation. At the same time, its inherent context awareness allows it to apply effects to specific events in the footage, leaving other parts untouched.
Preparatory work for the feature was discovered by the respected forensic app specialist AssembleDebug, who uncovered a new Soba button in the Google Photos Create tab, featuring a YouTube-like video icon with Google’s familiar Gemini “sparkle” logo in the corner. Although the app doesn’t yet contain the code necessary to run the feature, it does offer clues about what Google is planning for Soba, and it’s a playbook we’ve seen before.
Photo Remix Gets A Video Upgrade
Internal test strings indicate that when Soba is enabled, the existing “Remix” button used for AI-powered photo edits is renamed to “Photo Remix,” presumably to avoid confusion with a new “Video remix” function. Google’s underlying app instructions confirm this switch: specific “Soba” code triggers the standard “Remix” button to rename itself to “Photo remix.” You can see the changed button description in AssembleDebug’s original teardown.
Furthermore, the Soba icon, as described above, follows the same design language Google uses for the Photo remix feature, except that the portrait image is replaced by a video play button.
While no internal labels explicitly identify the feature as “Video remix”, these clues strongly suggest that Soba will launch as the video equivalent of the current Photo remix feature. While Photo remix uses the Nano Banana model to edit photos, Soba (or “Video remix”) will likely use Gemini Omni to do the same for video, potentially making conversational video-editing features available directly within the Google Photos app.
Note that any new Video remix feature will differ from Google’s current “Photo to video” offering, which turns still images into video clips. A video remix will take existing video clips as input and produce a modified video as output.
Don’t Expect Full Gemini Omni In Google Photos
However, if Google follows a strategy similar to the original (Photo) Remix feature, we’re unlikely to see the full power of Gemini Omni unleashed in Google Photos. In fact, we may not see conversational features at all. Photo Remix launched in July 2025 with a severely limited set of capabilities, restricting users to just four available presets. This was expanded to a total of 13 just five months later, but it is still a far cry from the essentially limitless freeform editing capabilities Nano Banana offers.
Given this cautious approach to Photo Remix, I would expect a similarly restricted Video Remix feature to launch, at least initially, to keep the feature simple and safe to use. However, power users will likely feel underwhelmed. I would expect to be presented with a handful of carefully chosen presets rather than full conversational editing capabilities of Gemini Omni, although the final implementation remains to be seen.
I’ll be keeping an eye on future Google Photos updates for any advancements.
