Image Credits:Jonathan Johnson/Bloomberg / Getty Images
9:01 AM PDT · July 23, 2026
Google is adding a selfie video option as a new way for users to log in to their accounts, the company announced on Thursday, joining a growing wave of tech companies betting that biometrics and not passwords are the future of identity verification online. The tech giant says selfie videos give users more options to sign in if they’re ever locked out or don’t have access to their usual phone or computer.
Users set up a selfie video by looking at their device’s camera and completing a few guided head movements — think turning right or left or nodding — to capture multiple angles of their face. If a user is having trouble signing in later, they can take another selfie video to get back into their account, and Google will then compare the new video to the one used at setup to confirm it’s the correct person.
The bigger challenge Google is trying to solve is proving a real human, not a bot or a doctored video, is on the other side of the camera. “When you use a selfie to sign in, we use multiple layers of security to help prevent impersonation attempts like fake photos and videos (i.e., deep fakes),” Google wrote in the blog post. “For example, we match your video against your saved selfie and require you to perform simple movements to prove it’s a live video. We also use our standard security practices to detect and help prevent suspicious sign-in attempts.”
