Peggy K's Creator Weekly
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Creator Weekly: YouTube Creator Music; Canva Visual Suite; Google AI Video, Images, Speech

Creator Weekly: YouTube Creator Music; Canva Visual Suite; Google AI Video, Images, Speech

Peggy K
April 12, 2025

If you aren’t keen on generative AI-powered tools, then maybe skip this week’s updates, because it’s all about AI.

Productivity met creativity at two big tech conferences this week. Google Cloud Next, with updates for Google Cloud and Workspace, focused more on the productivity side and Canva Create focused more on the creativity side. But with Google highlighting video creation models and Canva launching a splashy new spreadsheet tool, the boundaries are blurring.

Plus there were updates for Google Search AI Mode, the latest version of Davinci Resolve has a suite of AI-powered tools, and Adobe announced their vision for incorporating agentic AI into their products..

If you don’t want to read about AI, check out the other updates for YouTube, Threads, Bluesky and X.

At Google Cloud Next, Google announced updates to its creative generative AI models Veo 2 (video) Lyria (music), Imagen 3 (images), Chirp 3 (speech).
Google Vids is adding Veo 2 video clip generation.
Google Docs is adding audio versions and podcast-style Audio Overviews.
There are more AI-powered features coming to Google Chat, Google Meet, and Google Slides.
Canva announced Visual Suite 2.0 with the new “visual first” Canva Sheets, Magic Charts, Canva AI assistant, Canva Code, and improved Photo Editor and Background Generator.
YouTube (and most of the entertainment industry) supports the NO FAKES Act, which could give people some copyright-style control over use of their digital likeness.
YouTube is adding AI-powered generation of custom instrumentals to Creator Music.
YouTube is expanding automatic location tagging to travel and restaurant-related Shorts.
Vimeo Streaming lets creators and entertainment companies launch their own “Netflix Style” video streaming apps.
Blackmagic Design’s Davinci Resolve 20 has new AI tools for creating your next video.
WordPress.com has a new AI-powered website builder. Free accounts come with 30 prompts.
Threads lets you import the people you followed on X (if they use the same handle).
Bluesky changed their Search tab to Explore.
X updated their parody account policy to require more transparency.
Google Search AI Mode now includes multi-modal search.
Adobe shared their vision for incorporating agentic AI in Express, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro.

Ten Years Ago This Week: FriendFeed Shut Down

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing highlights from 2015.

This week I asked “Is it time for a new FriendFeed?” And despite Betteridge’s law of headlines, I think the answer is “Yes”.

Creator Weekly Live 🔴: Sunday, 10:30AM Pacific time (6:30PM UTC)

Take this week’s quiz ✅: What do you know about YouTube monetization?

To Do & Try

Play and learn lighting design with the Learning Light interactive Studio from Google Arts & Culture.

Also, if you want to try some of Google’s AI-powered features announced this week, enable AI Mode in Search and sign up for Workspace Labs. (Sadly, not available in all locations)

Google Cloud Next: AI Tools for Productivity and Creativity

Earlier this week at Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas, Google announced updates coming to Google Workspace and Google Cloud for business, education and developers. Watch the 10 minute version of the keynote and learn about all the announcements.

Creativity

As expected, generative AI tools were front and center. For all of these enterprise customers can apply for early access. If you are using a personal account, you may have limited access.

Lyria music generator is now available on the Vertex AI developers platform (it also powers YouTube’s Dream Track)
Imagen 3 text-to-image model had improved ability to reconstruct missing portions of an image. It’s available in Google AI Test Kitchen ImageFX.
Veo 2 video generator can now remove objects, extend the frame of the video (for example landscape to vertical), and understands shot composition, camera angles, and pacing (for example a timelapse, pan right, or drone shot). It can also smoothly interpolate between frames. It’s available in Google AI Test Kitchen VideoFX.
Chirp 3 is a text-to-speech tool that is available in multiple voices and languages. It now includes Instant Custom Voice, to create custom voices with 10 seconds of audio input in more than 25 languages and dialects. Chirp 3 also lets you “weave AI-powered narration into your existing recordings”.

There are tons more AI-powered updates and infrastructure aimed at enterprise accounts, so be sure to check out the announcements link for all the details.

Productivity

There are also a slew of new AI-powered Google Workspace features. Availability will be announced when they become available, but they should be included with Google Workspace business or enterprise accounts. Some features will likely be available to personal accounts with a Google One AI Premium subscription or to try with free Google Workspace Labs.

Google Vids is adding Veo 2-powered generation of video clips to add to your videos. This will be available in alpha in the coming weeks.
Google Vids has also made it easier to change or update AI-generated voice-overs.
In Google Docs you will be able to create a podcast-style Audio Overview (like you can with NotebookLM) or full audio versions of your documents. This will be available “soon”.
Google Docs is also getting a “Help Me Refine” tool that will suggest writing improvements (like “make this more concise”), and then implement them. This will be available in alpha in the next few months.
Google Sheets will have a Gemini-powered “Help Me Analyze” tool. This will be available later this year.
If you join a meeting late, Google Meet’s “Take Notes For Me” will be able to tell you what you missed and answer questions. This will be available in Meet in the next couple of months.
In Google Chat you can call Gemini by typing @gemini to get a summary of the conversation, and highlight decisions and open questions. This will be available in Labs in the coming weeks.
For business and enterprise: Google Workspace Flows use Gems to build AI-powered automations to complete complex tasks. Workspace customers can request early access.

That’s a lot. When these features become available, I’ll include them in the newsletter.

Canva Create: “Productivity, meet creativity”

This week at Canva Create, Canva announced Visual Suite 2.0 with “seamless” creation between docs, whiteboards, websites, presentations, videos, spreadsheets and social content.

Canva Sheets

The big update was the launch of Canva Sheets, a “visual first” spreadsheet. You can use the new spreadsheets to manage your Canva-created content, resize images, translate, get AI-powered suggestions and more.

For calculations (which seem like a secondary feature) there is a “Magic Formula” option that converts natural language questions into formulas (but you definitely should understand the formula before you rely on the numbers).

You can also link Canva Sheets to Google Analytics and Hubspot to keep your numbers updated and use the new Magic Charts tool to create customizable Charts that automatically update when the numbers change.

Sheets should be available to everyone, but some features will require a paid account.

Canva AI: The new Canva AI chatbot can help create graphics, video or presentations from images you provide and simple text prompts.

Canva Code: Canva Code is an AI-powered tool that lets you easily create interactive content and widgets.

Photo Editor and Background Generator: Image editing right in your design, with point-and-click object selection, plus a new AI-powered text-to-image background generator.

Canva Design School: Canva’s updated design school is better integrated in Canva itself. You can find free and Pro classes here.

LinkedIn Ads: If you create video ads for LinkedIn, you can now connect your account to Canva for access to templates and easy publishing.

YouTube Supports NO FAKES Act

YouTube and Google support the bipartisan NO FAKES act, which allows performers (and maybe everyone) to control their “digital likeness”. This has broad support in the entertainment industry, including the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild), and other members of the international Human Artistry Campaign ( “Only humans are capable of communicating the endless intricacies, nuances, and complications of the human condition through art - whether it be music, performance, writing, or any other form of creativity.” )

You can read the text of the bill here. Hopefully there will be a breakdown by someone with legal expertise. The EFF was critical of the 2024 version of the bill. The 2025 version supposedly addresses some of those free speech concerns.

If you are familiar with DMCA takedowns of copyrighted material used without permission, then you’ll recognize similar takedown provisions with NO FAKES. And it gives families the rights to a digital version of their deceased loved one for up to 70 years after the person’s death.

YouTube has been working on creator likeness management tools, but most platforms would have to rely on user reports, which can be hit or miss.

Recently a skincare company used deepfakes of wellness and lifestyle creators in ads on Meta. Meta apparently refused to remove the deepfake video or stop running the ads. The creators had to hire lawyers to deal with it, which doesn’t seem right (or even possible for many people).

I think it’s good for there to be a requirement for platforms to deal with the deepfake content. But I wonder if NO FAKES will be an effective way to do that, and whether it gives enough space for fair use, like parody, news and educational uses.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

If you have access to Creator Music (beta) in YouTube Studio, YouTube is launching AI-powered generation of custom instrumentals you can use in your videos. Definitely no copyright claims! (Details from Creator Insider).

YouTube is expanding automatic location tagging to travel and restaurant-related Shorts. The location tag is based on the Short title and description and appears as an overlay in the Shorts player. You can remove or adjust the tagged location in the video details in YouTube Studio.

YouTube is testing an option in the Shorts editor to sync imported content to the beat of selected music (Details from Creator Insider).

YouTube is running an experiment where channels with both a Subscribe and Join (paid Membership) option have a “Subscribe+” option instead. This is to see if it’s less confusing. (Details from Creator Insider)

YouTube Creator Liaison Rene Ritchie talks to YouTube Studio Product Lead Ebi Atawodi about how YouTube has set up Studio for all types of Creators, how people sometimes mis-focus on stats, AI-powered “Inspiration” tools and more . It’s a long, but interesting discussion. Watch here.

From the YouTube blog: Cleo Abram & Amjad Hanif’s hot takes on AI, ownership & your channel's future.

Vimeo Streaming lets creators, businesses, entertainment companies, and educators launch their own “Netflix Style” video streaming video on demand (SVOD) apps. They note the unreliability of YouTube revenue and suggest a subscription model (their subscription platform, of course) as a revenue stream. How much does it cost? “Contact Sales”. The Publish Press newsletter has the big picture.

Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 20's new AI features include AI Intelliscript (“match the transcribed audio in media clips to the script and construct a timeline of the best selected takes”), AI Set Extender (expand the size of a scene and have AI fill in the blanks), AI Audio Assistant, AI Animated Subtitles, AI Multicam SmartSwitch and more. Plus lots more non-AI features. And you can get it for free.

Web Publishers and Search

WordPress(dot)com has a new AI-powered website builder. Free accounts can use 30 free prompts. Note that this is offered by Automattic’s WordPress hosting company and not part of regular WordPress (which you can find at WordPress(dot)org).

Digiday reports: Former Substack creators say they’re earning more on new platforms that offer larger shares of subscription revenue. Those other platforms include Beehiiv and Ghost. The difference is that Substack takes 10% of revenue, while other platforms charge a flat fee based on the number of subscribers. It’s just math.

Search Engine Roundtable reports that Google Discover will be coming to desktop. No timeline for when that will happen.

Threads launched a new option to find “popular creators from X”. Although it’s not actually that. If you exported your data from Twitter/X, you can upload the list of accounts you follow there. If they have the same handle, you can then easily follow the same account on Threads, whether they are popular or not. I don't think of X as having "creators" the way Instagram (and I guess Threads) does. When I was on Twitter, it was for making connections, not just following people. Also I’m not at all interested in the currently popular X accounts. Which is probably why this promotion feels off.

The Bluesky Search tab is now the Explore tab, and has trends, suggested accounts starter packs and feeds.

There are now a variety of emoji reactions you can use in Bluesky DMs (chat messages).

The downside of social for Brands is that there isn’t any way to control the way people react to your posts. Adobe found that out when they made their first post on Bluesky and got so much negative feedback they deleted it. Bluesky has a huge community of artists who aren’t happy with Adobe’s expensive subscription model and feel they are out-of-touch with artists and photographers. And this isn’t a new vibe, it’s just that there are more outspoken artists on Bluesky than, say, Facebook.

Lindsey Gamble recaps an interview with Instagram head Adam Mosseri: Instagram Head Adam Mosseri Talks Algorithm, Creator Growth, and Platform Strategy on Build Your Tribe Podcast

X has updated their policy for “Parody, Commentary, and Fan” (PCF) accounts to require PCF-compliant keywords at the beginning of the account name (like"parody," "fake," "fan," or "commentary") and prohibit the parody account from using the same profile image as the account being parodied.

More AI Updates and Tips

Google has added multi-modal search to AI Mode. Add an image to your query, and this is what happens:
“Drawing on our deep visual search expertise, Lens precisely identifies each object in the image. Using our query fan-out technique, AI Mode then issues multiple queries about the image as a whole and the objects within the image, accessing more breadth and depth of information than a traditional search on Google. The result is a response that’s incredibly nuanced and contextually relevant, so you take the next step.” US users can enable AI Mode in Search Labs.

Gemini Live is available on the Pixel 9 or Samsung Galaxy S25. Use it to “talk live with Gemini about anything you see, whether it’s through your phone’s screen or through its camera.”

Adobe published their vision for accelerating creativity and productivity with agentic AI. Here is what they are working on:

“We’ve been building an agent in Adobe Express that acts as a creative partner across every stage of the creation process. It will support customers in building their vision better and faster without having to learn every aspect of the tool.”
“Our vision is for Photoshop to be able to analyze your image and recommend smart, context-aware edits. Want a more dramatic sky? Photoshop could not only spot the opportunity to improve your image but also take the action for you with a single click, while keeping you in control.”
For Premiere Pro “we’re working on agents that understand all your media and that you can direct to take actions like developing a rough cut. The hardest part of the editorial process is often simply getting started.”

404 Media Reports: Facebook Pushes Its Llama 4 AI Model to the Right, Wants to Present “Both Sides”. Meta doesn’t share how they are doing that, or what types of queries they want to “improve”. Professor of Computational Linguistics Emily Bender notes “the problem with ‘biased’ answers coming out of chatbots is easy to avoid: don't set up chatbots as information access systems.”