When Google’s Veo 3 was launched in May it was definitely a ‘this is a big deal’ moment in generative AI releases. Social media feeds quickly filled up with remarkable gen AI video creations.
Watching from afar, I had a long running idea: generative AI could be great for education, particularly when referring to things that do not currently exist - like extinct animals. Kids love dinosaurs, so could I make a documentary about extinct animals using Google Veo 3? It was an unorthodox challenge.
Having gone through the experience, I saw that while Veo 3 is a great tool, it’s really not that easy to get exactly what you want. It takes a lot of time to generate and iterate material, and while there are many interesting quirks to learn, it’s not the kind of thing you can get to consistently wonderful outputs in a day.
A researcher and I spent several days watching tutorials and prompting for 10 different extinct animals. Pterygotus was one animal I was particularly excited about - a giant sea monster! But we never really got the consistency of look from Veo 3 to make 10 clips - a viable number to explain the animal. This happened more than once, to the point where I considered throwing in the towel entirely.
But instead of doing so, I switched to making a video about the pitfalls of the project, and cut the number of extinct animals down to 6. There were still some animals, like Ichthyostega, that I had only vaguely heard about - and generations for niche animals like this were harder, and sometimes incomprehensible (see Meganeura).
T Rex, Woolly Mammoth and the Dodo all got the best outcomes (eventually in the Dodo’s case), and given their fame and recognition, this is perhaps unsurprising. Although it is still a great mystery to me why Veo 3 simply couldn’t cope with a giant dragon fly.
So is Veo 3 all it’s cracked up to be? It’s definitely an amazing tool. But simultaneously, you need a lot of time and skill to make an entire documentary. I won’t be launching the Totally Extinct Animals YouTube channel just yet, but you can watch my video.
