2024-08-22 11:49:11
If Google is launching a new smartphone today, Thursday August 22, the Pixel 9 has surprised some journalists from the American press who were able to try it. And especially through the “Magic Retouch” function of the photo editor, which allows you to deepen the photos you have taken by inserting elements created from scratch by AI, such as an animal or an object. It is enough to describe these elements in the direction of a few words to get a reliable result, sometimes to the point that the change is not suspicious, as in the examples published by journalists from The Verge or from Sent.
This functionality is not new: Photoshop has allowed you to do the same manipulations for a year. But by integrating it with a smartphone, Google allows anyone to make up a photo in a moment, with little effort, without even needing to download an application. A perspective about which designers from specialized media The Verge etc Sent express their concern. An American designer from The Verge now published example of photo editing on Lines, causing anxiety reactions. “No, we are not ready”Internet user has moved. “Oh my God. Why does this feel like opening a Pandora’s box?”make another addition. “Wait we can do that with video”a third is afraid.
However, this new tool does not allow any kind of modification. For example, it prevents putting human figures in photos. But some journalists have managed to overcome these protections by, for example, adding a child to a photo. They also managed to create disturbing images, such as a crashed car and, on the ground, a bloodstained cloth appearing to cover a body. In addition, they found that these images contained no visual warning that they had been altered: Google simply placed a line of information in the text description that followed the digital photo, which was easy to delete.
If we can expect Google to hold the powers on its AI, the biggest problem for the brand will be to find and enforce a strong moderation policy to see all problematic use cases. According to Google, “Magic Retouch” is available in French with, for the moment, a limitation: the only language officially supported is English. It is not yet known whether it will be extended to other smartphones from the brand, or other Android mobile manufacturers.
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