Gemini Now Lets You Share Your Avatar for Friends’ Images and Videos, but Not in Europe
Google now lets users share their Gemini avatar—created from a face and voice recording—with others, who can then insert it into their Nano Banana images and Gemini Omni videos. Sharing requires mutual acceptance and can be revoked at any time, but the feature is unavailable in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, and the UK.
On Thursday, October 29, at 8:15 PM Paris time, Google launched avatar sharing in the Gemini app. An avatar is a digital likeness of oneself created by recording one’s face and voice; until now, Google presented it as strictly for its owner’s personal use. Now, it can be shared with friends, family, or coworkers, who can include you in their own generated images and videos.
How It Works
The avatar works across images generated with Nano Banana and videos created using Gemini Omni, Google’s video model. You simply mention it in the prompt using “@” followed by the user’s Google username: Google’s help documentation suggests creating a video of two friends doing “a silly dance.” Google promises character and voice consistency across creations without needing to re-upload a photo every time.
To share, you enter the recipient’s Gmail address in the avatar settings. The recipient must accept the invitation before they can use the other person’s likeness and voice. The owner maintains control: they can review the list of authorized users, set an expiration date, and revoke access at any time.
Key Limitations to Keep in Mind
Revoking access prevents any new creations, but it does not delete images and videos that have already been generated using your avatar. Similarly, deleting your recordings purges your face and voice data from Google’s servers, but it does not remove previously generated content. In other words, a casually shared avatar can only be partially walked back.
The feature is restricted to users 18 and older with a personal Google Account, and currently works only in English. Images featuring avatars are accessible within Gemini, but generating videos requires a Google AI subscription. Crucially, avatars are not available in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom: European users cannot access the feature for now, and Google has provided no timeline.
Our take
Google is turning the personal avatar—previously a solo creator tool—into a social feature built around an explicit consent mechanism: opt-in acceptance, authorized user lists, expirations, and revocation. This is a step in the right direction for an engine that handles real people’s faces and voices, offering more guardrails than simply uploading a photo into an image generator. The primary limitation is that revocation is purely forward-looking: anything previously generated stays intact. Then there is the feature’s absence in Europe: Google hasn’t explained why, leaving it unclear whether this reflects strict European biometric and voice data regulations or simply a phased rollout.
Sources
- Google Gemini (X) — shareable avatars announcement Primary source
- Gemini Help — Create and use an avatar in Gemini Apps Primary source
- Google — Gemini Omni page (video generation and avatars) Primary source
A primary source comes directly from the company, lab or organization concerned. A secondary source reports the information without being its author: we flag it as such. Spotted an error? See our corrections policy.
