Google’s Pixel 8 and 8 Pro have launched, and both include a disturbing new image editing tool that lets you swap out people’s faces
Google is putting AI technology at the forefront of its latest Pixel phones, but I hate one of the new features more than anything I’ve seen in my four years as a tech journalist.
AI photo features are nothing new for Google: it first released the Magic Eraser tool in 2021, before following it with Magic Editor at this year’s I/O event in May.
The latter lets you to completely change the composition of photos, allowing subjects to be moved into the middle of a frame or the size of a person changed.
But the new Best Take feature takes things to a whole new level of grim. In a media briefing, Google used the example of a funny family photograph on a fairground ride, with the children looking distracted.
Best Take was used to swap people’s faces to ensure that everyone in the group was smiling – this was done by the phone taking a burst of photos, and then allowing users to replace expressions with whichever version they deemed suitable. Basically, it turned everyone into creepy, waxwork-like subjects.
Marketing will have you believe that this is the key to a ‘perfect’ snapshot, a way to avoid having one person blinking, scowling or in the middle of a sentence. To that, I say that it completely defeats the purpose of a photo.
Photos on smartphones are meant to capture a moment in time.
