Google is finally fixing one of the most frustrating things about Gemini’s AI image generation

Google Gemini is one of the biggest new players, if not the biggest newcomer, to the artificial intelligence landscape of 2024. It’s Google’s attempt to grow its multi-industry-leading company in another realm, and it’s doing so by bringing Gemini to practically every app in the Google Workspace. While AI is certainly cool, it represents a horrible reality for many in creative sectors, as the ethical questions over how AI is trained crosses over with both copyright issues and fair pay disputes. Imagen 3, Google’s text-to-image generator, is directly involved in this debate, but Google said it will defend you if its AI images infringe on your copyright. Never mind the ongoing debate; Gemini’s image creation user experience is getting better, and it now offers more customization options to its users.

For as long as you can generate images using Gemini, the common denominator between Imagen 3 and Imagen 2 has been its square canvas outputs. That’s set to change in an upcoming stable version of the Google app, as Android Authority reports that, on version 15.41.34.29.arm64 beta, there are now in-app settings for resizing Gemini images. It doesn’t look like a simple crop and resize tool, either; the site reports that Gemini will add more background detail when cropping down and fill in the blank spaces when making images larger.

Gemini’s busy year of image generation

(Source: Android Authority)

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes at Google with Gemini’s image creation tools, and Imagen 3 is getting smarter every day. The third version of Imagen was released in August, and it improved upon Imagen 2’s prompt comprehension and added a four-image output option called Imagen 3 Fast. One shortcoming (or, something that we should be happy about as a society) is that Gemini cannot generate images of people. Google admitted that Gemini’s image generation capabilities “missed the mark” early on, and while images of people still cannot be generated, we think that’s A-OK.

Imagen 3 has seeped into many different Google apps, like Slides. Users don’t have to leave the confines of their template to make AI images in the cloud, but they do need to have an Enterprise or Education account, or access to Google Workspace Labs. Personal accounts can gain access to the feature by subscribing to Google One AI Premium. Other than Slides, the Google Pixel 9’s Screenshots app finally got the Gemini integration it should’ve had all along.