Google’s AI edit photos in the Camera app.

 

 

With Google’s AI, you can now drastically edit photos directly within the Camera app.

 

Has Google given up on security measures?

Google’s newest AI photo editor, “Reimagine,” reportedly lets you add or remove objects from pictures with “uncanny” effects by just replying to a text prompt.  This is according to The Verge.

The feature, which was revealed earlier this month in conjunction with the release of Google’s Pixel 9 smartphone, could unintentionally jeopardize photo authenticity because it allows users to edit photos straight within the camera app.

Chris Welch of The Verge provided several examples, such as a realistic picture of the aftermath of a vehicle and bike crash, a lion lurking behind a locked fence, and a “mystery liquid gushing out of a Metro-North train.”

Very few restrictions were in place for The Verge when testing the new function, which allowed them to simply add “car wrecks, smoking bombs in public places, sheets that appear to cover bloody corpses, and drug paraphernalia to images.”

While describing in detail the exact types of images that The Verge was producing that were forbidden, a Google representative pointed the newspaper to the company’s Terms of Service, saying that Google is “committed to continually enhancing and refining the safeguards we have in place.”

The Verge ran a different test in which they uploaded a modified photo to an Instagram story to see if Meta would tag it to alert other users that it was a fake. However, the system did not work as intended. That shouldn’t be shocking, given that Meta’s “Made with AI” branding campaign has failed miserably it was even discovered that actual images had been incorrectly identified as AI-generated.

In summary, while generative AI has long been used to alter photos, Google‘s most recent photo editing tool goes one step further by making the technology extremely accessible, perhaps creating a dangerous precedent for a world full of Photoshopped photos in the future.

We’re already there, though, given that former president Donald Trump has already turned to using technology as a weapon to disparage his opponent Kamala Harris.