For many smartphone manufacturers, AI is the all-purpose weapon. But when it comes to the camera, it poses dangers. But Google doesn’t want to turn Pixel phones into AI monsters.
Google doesn’t want to completely do without AI for photos, but it does want to use it differently than the competition. (Source: AI content generated by Netzwelt using Leonardo AI)
- Google is critical of the trend towards AI-driven hardware in smartphones.
- Pixel cell phones should take a different approach and use AI primarily on the software side.
- In the interview he talks about how taking photos has changed these days.
If you’ve bought a new smartphone recently, it probably has at least a handful of AI functions. Artificial intelligence has become particularly important for photos and photo editing. Many cell phone manufacturers are therefore equipping their smartphone cameras with AI. But Google doesn’t think that’s a good idea.
That’s what Marc Levoy, one of the leading developers at Google, says. In an interview with the US online magazine Inverse, he speaks in detail about the AI trend in the mobile phone industry and also indirectly pokes fun at competitors such as Xiaomi and Apple.
Levoy has the feeling that instead of smartphones with a built-in camera, we are now buying smart cameras with a smartphone attached. He criticizes the fact that many competitors are building more and more AI functions directly into the hardware. The camera then uses these to automatically scale up individual pixels or optically adjust image areas before the actual photo is finished. The photo is optimized before shooting.
Google doesn’t want to go that route with Pixel smartphones, or as Levoy puts it, “We’re not trying to create a simulation.” Instead of continually piling up the camera with AI functions, Google should focus on the software. Here, users should also be able to optimize their photos with AI, but independently and retrospectively.
[Angefangen beim Pixel 6] you can see a change from image editing to image generation. It’s a shift from ‘let’s make this picture less noisy and sharper’ to ‘let’s recreate our memory from scratch’ because memories are different from reality and that’s okay.
Marc Levoy (Google developer)
According to Levoy, most cell phone users are no longer concerned with capturing the actual moment in the best possible way, but rather with creating the optimal photo for that one moment. The photo should not depict the actual person, but rather the subjective memory of it. A compromise that Google also wants to make, but primarily with regard to the software and less with regard to the hardware, as Levoy makes clear again:
Back then, people used photo editing to hide bad cameras. Nowadays, all smartphones – whether a simple picture on a bright window or a low-contrast scene – produce pretty good results. Now users see editing as part of their creative process, as a mark they leave behind. For this reason we also deal with [Software-]Editors.
Marc Levoy (Google developer)
We recognize that putting everything straight into the camera is no longer ideal. People then want to be able to press the button themselves to make their own decision. Not because they are unhappy with what the camera is telling them, but because they want to put more of their life and soul into it.
Marc Levoy (Google developer)
Finally, Levoy says that cell phone manufacturers definitely have a responsibility when dealing with AI. He says that people first have to see an authentic and unadulterated self-image in the photos they take in order not to get a false picture of reality.
Google Pixel 9 (Pro): This is already known
As always, there are numerous rumors about the new Google Pixel smartphones months before sales start. You can find out what is predicted for the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro here.
Nevertheless, this statement leaves a bad aftertaste, as Google Pixel cell phones continue to allow photos to be “falsified” using AI, albeit only afterwards using software. We are still curious to see how AI-heavy the software of the new Google Pixel 9, for example, will be.
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