Google’s Veo 3 Generative Video Model Faces Subtitle Issues
Getting rid of them isn’t straightforward—or cheap. Users have been forced to resort to regenerating clips (which costs them more money), using subtitle-removing tools, or cropping their videos to eliminate the subtitles altogether. Josh Woodward, vice president of Google Labs and Gemini, shared on X on June 9 that Google is developing fixes to reduce the gibberish text. However, over a month later, users continue to report issues with it in Google Labs’ Discord channel, highlighting the challenges in correcting problems within major AI models.
Like its predecessors, Veo 3 is available to paying members of Google’s subscription tiers, which start at $249.99 a month. To generate an eight-second clip, users enter a text prompt describing the scene they’d like to create into Google’s AI filmmaking tool Flow, Gemini, or other Google platforms. Each Veo 3 generation costs a minimum of 20 AI credits, and the account can be topped up at a cost of $25 per 2,500 credits. Mona Weiss, an advertising creative director, notes that regenerating her scenes to eliminate the random captions is becoming costly. “If you’re creating a scene with dialogue, up to 40% of its output has gibberish subtitles that make it unusable,” she says. “You’re burning through money trying to get a scene you like, but then you can’t even use it.”
When Weiss reported the problem to Google Labs through its Discord channel in hopes of getting a refund for her wasted credits, the team directed her to the company’s official support team. They offered her a refund for the cost of Veo 3, but not for the credits. Weiss declined, as accepting would have meant losing access to the model altogether. The Google Labs’ Discord support team has been informing users that subtitles can be triggered by speech, confirming they are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it.
