Google’s AI photo tools may be too easy and too good
The Verge’s Sarah Jeong on the Google Pixel 9’s new “Magic Editor” generative AI feature, and the future it will deliver:
Even before AI, those of us in the media had been working in a defensive crouch, scrutinizing the details and provenance of every image, vetting for misleading context or photo manipulation. After all, every major news event comes with an onslaught of misinformation. But the incoming paradigm shift implicates something much more fundamental than the constant grind of suspicion that is sometimes called digital literacy.
I’m reminded of the old Hemingway quote about how one goes bankrupt: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” We’ve been watching the gradual erosion of images (and even video) due to AI, deepfakes, and the like, but I can’t help but feel, as Jeong does, that we are on the precipice of the “sudden” part as these tools become even easier and even more widely available.1
Despite Apple’s attempt to forestall some of these risks with the guardrails and restrictions it has built into its forthcoming Image Playgrounds feature, I still think that it would be wiser for the company not to wade into this market at all. Reject the premise that this is something that users want or need; there is something to be valued in standing up for responsibility in technology when so many of its competitors seem to abrogate it. 2 While you might not be able to disinvent something, you can at least choose not to make such questionable tools widely and easily available rather than throwing up your hands in helplessness. “If we don’t do it, someone else will” is an argument not worth the air spent evincing it. Choose better.
- And yes, photos have always been fake. But that doesn’t mean it can’t get worse. ↩
- Kudos, in that, to Procreate for taking a strong stance on refusing to to follow the crowd. ↩