Google I/O 2026: Gemini Omni replaces Veo 4 and ships everywhere
Google I/O kicked off today with the answer to the question everyone was asking: yes, there's a new video model, no, it's not called Veo 4. The model is Gemini Omni, and the rebrand is the strategy. Google is collapsing video, audio, image, and text generation into a single unified model under the Gemini name. Veo and Imagen as separate product lines are effectively folded in.
Demis Hassabis introduces Gemini Omni at the I/O 2026 keynote
What Gemini Omni actually is
Omni takes any combination of text, images, audio, and video as input and produces high-quality video as output, grounded in Gemini's world knowledge. The model edits through conversation: upload a clip, ask to rotate the framing, add an element, change the lighting, swap the actor's wardrobe. The pipeline is unified, which means the same model handles generation, editing, and continuation in one pass.
The day-one distribution is aggressive. Gemini Omni Flash is live now in the Gemini app, Google Flow, and YouTube Shorts for AI Plus, Pro, and Ultra subscribers globally. That's a much larger surface than any prior Google AI video launch, and it's a direct counter to the Sora shutdown three weeks ago. Google is making sure the audience Sora abandoned has an immediate Google-owned destination.
How it compares
Compared to Kling 3.0, Gemini Omni's headline differentiator is the multimodal input. Kling's strength is multi-shot continuity and 4K output; Omni's is the ability to mix references freely across modalities (a voice clip + a reference image + a prompt + a guide video, blended into one output).
The unified-model approach also changes the editing workflow. Where Kling and Runway treat editing as a separate model pass (typically slower and more expensive), Omni does edits in the same diffusion pass as generation. In practice this means iterations feel closer to text chat than to traditional video tools.
Pricing was not announced for the Pro tier on the keynote stage, but the Flash variant rolling out via the Gemini app means most subscribers get free access through their existing tier. That alone will pull a meaningful chunk of the AI video market into Google's gravity well.
Independent recap of the most striking Gemini Omni demos
Gemini 3.5 Flash and Google Antigravity
Two other announcements matter for builders. Gemini 3.5 Flash is the new mid-tier model, and it reportedly outperforms Gemini 3.1 Pro on coding and agentic benchmarks while running at Flash-tier speed and price. For any app calling Gemini today, the migration is a strict improvement.
Google Antigravity is Google's agent-first development platform. The pitch is that instead of building tools that help developers write code, Antigravity provides agents that help developers act, including across Google's product surfaces (Search, Workspace, Cloud, and the new Gemini Spark assistant). It's pitched directly against Anthropic's Claude with computer use and against OpenAI's GPT-based agent stack.
There was also the Android XR glasses preview, which is genuinely interesting but a year early to matter for game and creator workflows.
What this means for the AI video market
Three things shift today.
First, the "many specialized models" pattern that defined 2024 and 2025 (one for text, one for image, one for video, one for audio) is being explicitly killed by one of the labs that helped define it. Whether it sticks depends on whether Omni's unified output quality holds up across modalities in real use, not just in demos.
Second, the distribution moat just got bigger. Sora died because it couldn't get to a billion users fast enough. Omni starts with the Gemini app, Google Flow, and YouTube Shorts on day one. That's already where billions of people make and watch video.
Third, the open-source and price-competitive models (Kling at $0.07-0.14/sec, LTX-2 open-weights, Wan2.2) get an interesting position. If Google's bundled offer is "free with your $20/mo Gemini subscription," the only places to compete are either above (pro tools with deeper control) or below (open-source self-hosted).
What we'd test first
For anyone building creator tools, the immediate question is whether the Omni API ships at I/O developer day, what the pricing looks like, and what the rate limits are. The marketing surface (Gemini app, Flow, Shorts) is locked to Google. The API is the only way to integrate Omni into your own product. We'll update this post once those details ship.
For game studios specifically, the multi-shot consistency story is the one to watch. If Omni can hold a character across cuts the way Kling 3.0 can but with editable mid-stream control, cinematic prototyping for vertical-slice trailers gets a lot cheaper.