Google Slides opens up Duet AI image generation with Imagen

At the start of last month, Google Workspace announced that it would start public testing of Duet AI image generation in Slides, and it’s now more widely available.

If live for your account, opening slides.new will bring up the “Welcome to Workspace Labs” prompt like in Gmail and Google Docs. “Help me visualize” lets you “create visuals for your presentation.” Google previously told us that it’s powered by Imagen and other image-generation models.

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At the end of the toolbar, you’ll see a photo icon with a sparkle in the top-right corner that has a neat blue/purple pulse when you hover over it. This opens the Help me visualize panel, where you can enter a text prompt. Google’s hint is to “Describe your idea.”

Example prompts include:

• “A beautiful photograph of a Hawaiian beach at sunset with palm trees in the distance”
• “A plate of freshly baked blueberry muffins on a wooden kitchen table next to a large window”
• “Watercolor painting of hydrangeas in a water pitcher”
• “A futuristic cityscape with skyscrapers and flying cars set at night with HD details and shadows”

To get “better results,” Google recommends including the “subject, setting, distance to subject, materials, or background” in your prompt while avoiding figurative language.

After entering, you can “Add a style”: none, Photography, Background, Vector art, Sketch, Watercolor, Cyberpunk, and I’m Feeling Lucky.

Google notes that it might take about 20 seconds to generate images, and it is indeed much longer than text in Docs or Gmail. You get eight options with the ability to generate another set with previous creations remaining. A click adds the picture to your current slide, while you can leave thumbs-up/down feedback.

You can sign-up for Duet AI image generation in Google Slides here.