Use Google’s Flow TV If You Really Want to Watch an Endless Stream of AI-Powered Videos
Even if you don’t want to dive into AI-powered video creation, using Google’s latest Veo 3 model , you can sit back and admire (or be horrified) by the work of others: Flow TV is a new chill-out experience that lets you scroll through a seemingly endless carousel of AI-generated clips.
Unlike the Flow video creator, which is required to create these videos, you don’t need to pay Google a subscription to use Flow TV, and you don’t even need to sign in to a Google account. It’s a showcase for Veo’s best AI-generated clips, though it’s currently limited to the older Veo 2 model , not the Veo 3.
Google hasn’t revealed much about the creators of the videos on Flow TV, but it’s described as an “ever-growing storefront” of videos, so presumably new clips are being added regularly behind the scenes, and we may eventually see Veo 3 mixed-media clips, the same clips that are already tricking people online .
Are you ready to take a break from content created by flesh and blood people and see what AI is cooking up? Point your browser to the Flow TV channel listing .
Switching channels
The channel list gives you an idea of what’s available on Flow TV: we have channels like Window Seat (views from inside a train carriage), Unnatural (nature with an AI twist), and Zoo Break (animal adventures). Some of these take advantage of AI video’s strengths, including It’s All Yarn (self-explanatory) and Dream Factory (general weirdness).
And by the way, be prepared to be scared pretty regularly: Flow TV isn’t ideal if you get easily irritated or nervous, because these clips change quickly and contain content that’s way out of line with the norm. I didn’t encounter anything truly shocking or disturbing, but this is AI, and Flow TV isn’t exactly focused on realism.
There’s also a Shuffle All option in addition to the individual channels, and whichever route you take through the clips, there’s plenty to watch – I couldn’t get through it all. You can also switch to the Short Films tab at the top of the channel list to see three longer titles from established creators.
Whichever route you take through this content, you’ll get playback controls below the current clip: controls to pause playback, skip forward and back between clips, loop the video, and switch to full-screen mode. However, you can’t skip forward or back through a clip like you can on YouTube.
On the right side of the control panel, you can switch between watching one video at a time and viewing the entire grid of options, and further to the right, you have a channel switcher. Click the TV icon on the left side of the control panel to see all available channels again, and the Flow TV button in the top left corner to jump to something random. There’s also a search box at the top to help you find something specific.
Operational design
As you watch videos, you’ll see a Show Prompt toggle underneath each clip. Turn this on to see the prompt used to create the video you’re watching, along with the AI model deployed (which is always Veo 2, at least for now). It’s an interesting behind-the-scenes look at how each clip was created.
Here’s an example : “First person POV. Follow me through this secret door into my magical world. Documentary. Soft natural light. 90s.” As you can see, Veo simply lets you insert any ideas, camera directions, or stylistic suggestions that come to mind without worrying too much about formal structure (or grammar).
Uncovering the hints allows you to see what the AI got right and what it got wrong, and how the models interpret different instructions. Of course, it always makes the most general selections from the hints, based on what dominates its training data: generic swans, generic buses, generic cars, generic people, generic camera angles and movements. If you want something out of the ordinary from an AI video, you have to ask for it specifically.
Look closely and you’ll see the usual telltale signs of AI generation, from the way most clips use similar pacing, scene length, and framing, to weird physics that are constantly confusing (and sometimes intentionally used for effect). AI video is getting better quickly, but it’s a much harder task than text or images would suggest.
For now, Flow TV is an entertaining showcase gallery of where AI video is at: what it does well, and what it still lacks. For now, I’ll set aside questions about how much energy went into creating all those clips, or what types of videos Veo’s models might have been trained on, but it might be worth bookmarking Flow TV’s channel catalog if you want to stay up to date with the state of AI filmmaking.