This is how the new Google Pixel 9 could ruin photography forever!

It really sucks that in a week in which we celebrated “World Photography Day” and the art of the still photo, Google started selling its latest iteration of the Pixel phone, a fake photo machine.

Before you know it, the type of deep fake photos that Donald Trump shared on his social media platform, of singer Taylor Swift supposedly supporting his election won’t be rare, but very very common, generated by you and I.

With the new Pixel 9, which I haven’t reviewed (Google didn’t respond to my e-mail request) there are several photo related tools that allow people to add and subtract things to photos with a speed and ease that Photoshop could only dream of.

The Verge says that anyone who buys this phone “will have access to the easiest, breeziest user interface for top-tier lies, built right into their mobile device.”

The Pixel (with just a 2.4% market share in the US) is the also-ran to no. 1 Apple iPhone (60%) and no. 2 Samsung Galaxy (30%) and despite breathless coverage in the tech trade press about new models, the Pixel has never caught much of a break with consumers. This despite it being the best overall experience for people who love Google. It’s as seamless in their world as Apple is in its ecosystem.

So what can Google do to get consumers interested in a phone that in the past has been overlooked? How about going all AI, with tricks that take the art of photography to April Fool’s Day con jobs.

Namely:

• “Add Me,” lets you take a photo of say, the two of you, and add a third person to the image after the fact, while the really controversial one is called Remagine, which turns ordinary photos into unlabeled generative AI artwork, as seen above with the addition of the dog on a bike and the dead pig in New York City.

Now before I go on, a quick note on photo editing and ethics.

• I grew up in a darkroom, where I routinely darkened and lightened portions of an image (known as “dodge” and “burn”) and could crop the negative into something different from what I shot.
• In the digital world, I use Photoshop, Lightroom and apps like Snapseed daily to enhance a scene. I crop, dodge and burn, enhance the colors, adjust the lighting, darken the skies and more times than not, take what could be an overcast, dull look to a shot and boost it with contrast and increased intensity of the colors. No photo leaves my phone without at least one edit.

If you are interested in having your photos published by a credible organization, you are not allowed to remove objects from a photo and other life altering tools which many of us could accomplish in seconds with Photoshop.

• The Associated Press’s guidelines: “AP pictures must always tell the truth. We do not alter or manipulate the content of a photograph in any way. No element should be digitally added to or subtracted from any photograph. Only retouching or the use of the cloning tool to eliminate dust and scratches are acceptable.”

That said, magazine covers are retouched. Sometimes heavily. When you see celebrity portraits in print, trust me, they’ve been worked on.

And online, many photographers stray far, far from AP’s strict rules. Just look at Instagram. Most of what you see there has been altered in some way.

Which brings us back to Google’s Pixel 9, 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL, which range in price from $799 to $1,099, and that new “Reimagine” feature.

On the Tom’s Guide site, John Velasco wrote about his experience, how he instantly added imaginary sunflowers and fire flames to a selfie, how he took a photo of an ordinary New York subway platform and was able to insert a rat eating a pizza.

What he didn’t add was any kind of watermark or sign that let the viewer know that what they were seeing was doctored.

But I don’t fault Velasco. That would lie with Google. This is the company that famously once said its motto was to not “be evil.” But in this case, big G looks like a red devil.

The company has taken a backseat to Openai’s ChatGPT and is desperate to demonstrate that it can play the AI game too. But in its zeal to get there, it needs to be 100% clear with consumers about what we’re seeing.

Again, what Velasco did on his Pixel could have been pulled off in Photoshop or another image editing program that would have charged a monthly subscription to use, taken more time to make, and isn’t as easy to share socially as mobile phone generated images are.

As more than one commenter has noted online, AI can be useful, for filling out forms, transcribing interviews, finding the correct hours of a store and engaging in back and forth on travel plans, in a way a search engine can’t.

I love photography for the memories: showing what I saw at a given moment, celebrating the beauty of the world by being out there at those “magic” morning and evening times and sharing it with the world, snapping street images of things that I find interesting, capturing emotion and smiling faces at their best.

My concern is that if this Pixel Reimagine thing takes off, Samsung and Apple could follow it up with similar fakery.

I love editing tools. But before we flood the net with them, please let people know what we’re seeing. 

So what can do about this? For one, refuse to buy Google’s new phone. And write to the company and let them know how you feel. (The only way I can find to do this is on the former Twitter, using the @google symbol in your tweet. Customer feedback on Google’s pages will send you into form and question hell.

Readers, what do you think? Are you with me on this? I’d love to hear from you.