How to make your very own AI clone

Google announced a heap of new Gemini features at Google I/O last month, and one of them — Gemini Avatar — is finally rolling out. What is Gemini Avatar? Essentially, it’s an AI clone you can create of yourself to use in AI-generated videos, capturing not only your physical likeness but even your voice. Welcome to 2026!

The whole concept of Gemini Avatar sounds like something straight out of a Black Mirror episode, and yet, it’s a real feature you can use right now. Should you? That’s up to you to decide. But if you’re curious and want to see what Gemini Avatar is all about, here’s how to get started.

In order to use Gemini Avatar, you’ll need to be subscribed to a paid Google AI plan. Specifically, any of the following:

• Google AI Plus
• Google AI Pro
• Google AI Ultra

While any paywalled feature is annoying, it’s at least nice to see Gemini Avatar being included in the cheaper AI Plus tier. With so many other Gemini features restricted to the Pro and Ultra plans, this is a breath of fresh air.

Assuming you have one of the above Google AI subscriptions, the next step is to create your Gemini Avatar. From the Gemini app on your phone, follow these steps:

1. Tap the menu icon (the two lines) in the upper-left corner.
2. Tap the settings gear icon.
3. Tap Avatar.
4. Tap Get started.
5. Tap I agree.
6. Allow camera and microphone access.
7. Tap Start.
8. Follow the on-screen instructions.

The recording process starts with you reading a series of numbers aloud. After a few of these, you’re asked to look straight into the camera, then to turn your head to the right and left. The whole process takes just a couple of minutes, and when you’re done, you’ll see a photo of yourself on the “Your avatar” page.

Immediately after creating your Gemini Avatar, you can tap the Use avatar button to create a video that includes your avatar. Any time you want to create a video with your avatar in the future, include @me or @[Your name] in Gemini’s prompt box, tap your name from the pop-up, and it’s included just like that. Additionally, you can tap the plus icon (+) and select Avatar from the menu.

While all of this works from the main Gemini home page, you may find it easier to create your avatar video from the Videos page (tap the menu icon in the top-left, then tap Videos). This includes several video styles/prompt ideas to help get you started, such as “Anime,” “Decades fashion,” 80’s music video,” and more. As with any Gemini AI-generated videos, you can be as general or specific with your video requests as you want. More specific, detailed prompts usually give you the best results.

In my testing so far, Gemini Avatar is actually pretty impressive — which is to be expected, considering it’s powered by Gemini Omni. My AI clone looks shockingly similar to me, and its voice sounds like me, too. It does still look like an AI video to my eyes, but I’m not sure my mom would be able to tell.

The above video was created using the prompt, “create a video of me wearing a t shirt with the Android Authority logo. Show me at the Google campus hanging out with the different Android figurines.”

I can’t say Gemini Avatar is something I’ll use very often (if at all), but it is interesting, to say the very least. And a bit creepy. But hey, at least my avatar seems happy at the Google campus.