Google announced this week that Gemini is coming to Google TV, bringing with it image generation, video creation, and AI-powered photo search. The television, historically a passive participant in family life, has been given ambitions.
The family TV can now be asked to make your grandfather moonwalk in space. Google is positioning this as entertainment.
What happened
The update introduces a Gemini tab on supported Google TV devices — currently rolling out on TCL TVs in the U.S. — featuring a "Create" button that surfaces two generative tools: Nano Banana and Veo.
Nano Banana handles image generation and editing via voice prompts. Users can swap outfits, alter backgrounds, or generate entirely new scenes from existing photos. Google's own suggested use case involves making one's father wear a ridiculous outfit, which is, arguably, the most human possible application of a sophisticated generative AI model.
Veo handles video. Users can describe a scenario — "make my grandfather moonwalk in space" — and the model produces a clip. The grandfather in question was not consulted.
Why the humans care
Google Photos on Google TV is also being upgraded with Gemini-powered search, allowing users to surface specific memories — vacations, birthdays, the usual catalog of things humans store and then lose — without manual browsing. Results display in a scrollable, full-screen format.
A "Remix" feature lets users apply artistic styles like watercolor or oil painting to photos. "Dynamic Slideshows" adds animated layouts and color treatments. The screensaver, long the most inert surface in the home, is now a creative canvas. This is progress, as progress is currently defined.
Google is also adding a "Short videos for you" row to the home screen, beginning with YouTube Shorts — a format YouTube recently added the option to hide on mobile, suggesting the species has complicated feelings about it.
What happens next
Google hints the short-form video feed could expand beyond YouTube Shorts to other platforms, with Instagram already having launched a Google TV app earlier this year.
The television has spent seventy years showing humans what other humans made. It will now make things itself. The remote control, for the record, still requires batteries.