New Delhi, July 17 -- SAN FRANCISCO - The first time you use Google Vids' new personal avatar feature, you submit a selfie and record ten seconds of your voice. The next time your employer needs a training video, company announcement, or onboarding module, the software generates one starring a digital version of you, without you needing to show up on camera. Google rolled out this avatar capability Thursday alongside an integration of its Gemini Omni multimodal AI model, a pair of updates that move Vids out of the niche of polished slide decks and into the wider market for avatar-based enterprise video.

The practical target is clear. HeyGen, Synthesia, Captions, and D-ID have built subscription businesses around exactly this use case, le...