Historically, building an app required an intimate understanding of the intricacies of writing code. Thanks to AI, those days are over.

Google unveiled Opal, an experimental tool out of Google Labs that allows developers to create apps using natural language prompts and interactive visual aids, Thursday. Opal harnesses a suite of Google's proprietary AI models to help users create various visual assets for their apps. Gemini 2.5 can assist with the written copy for a blog post, for example, while Veo 3 and Imagen 4 can generate accompanying videos (including audio) or images, respectively.

Also: Google's new Search mode puts classic results back on top - how to access it

"We want to deliver a product that gives users more control and transparency over combining all the capabilities of Google models, without having to code," Elle Zadina, a product manager with the company, said in an online demo video.

The feature offers a gallery of premade app templates, each with its own aesthetic, similar to those offered by website-building platforms like Wix and Squarespace. They're also tailored to different creative needs: one lets you build immersive virtual games, for example, and another is geared toward generating video ads for a specific audience.

You can also start from scratch by clicking the "Create New" window above the template gallery. This will direct you to a simple prompt window, where you can describe in natural language a rough overview of the function you'd like your app to perform. Your instructions will be converted into an illustrated workflow, organized by inputs (what you've requested), generation steps (the specific steps the models are taking to design the app), and output (the final, amalgamated product).

Each step appears as a separate box, which you can click to see the specific actions the models are taking or add your own edits directly. There's also a "Share app" option in the top-right corner of the screen in Opal, through which you can toggle your app from private to public and share a URL with anyone with a Google account. Opal is available now for US users in public beta -- you can access it here.

Also: I got ChatGPT Agent to deliver a truly useful report - and then NotebookLM took it to the next level

This release comes just one day after Microsoft-owned GitHub launched Spark, a similar app-building platform, in public preview. These systems are part of a broader trend throughout the tech industry toward "low-code" and "no-code" tools, which harness AI to automate many of the key steps in the software development process.

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• I'm an AI tools expert, and these are the only two I pay for (plus three I'm considering)