“Precision rather than fantasy. » Apple explains why its AI photo editing isn’t as amazing as Google or Samsung’s

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What is a photo? It’s a question that comes up more and more regularly as technology evolves into an AI dystopian reality. From celebrity deep fakes to inserting a lion into a photo of your office, photo editing is evolving at a rapid pace that makes many people, myself included, uncomfortable.

As Apple prepares to launch its suite of AI-powered tools, Apple Intelligencewhich includes a new photo editing feature called To clean which allows you to remove objects from images, the different approaches of tech companies become clear. On the one hand, Google’s AI editing tools allow you to completely transform an image by adding lava lakes or transforming buildings into spaceships, while on the other, there is the more basic Apple, which can… remove a water bottle.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, spoke with The Wall Street Journal to discuss Apple’s approach to imaging software, and he summed up Apple’s approach to AI this way: “We help deliver accurate information, not fantasy.” »

In the interview, WSJ’s Joanna Stern demonstrates how Clean Up works, removing an intrusive water bottle from the edge of an image. Federighi explains that “even the possibility of removing this water bottle was the subject of a lot of debate internally.

“Do we want to make it easier to remove that water bottle or that mic?” Because that water bottle was there when you took the photo. The demand for people wanting to clean up what seemed to be extraneous details in the photo that do not fundamentally change the meaning of what happened is very, very high. And so, you know, we were ready to take that small step.

Federighi goes on to explain that Apple is constantly thinking about the impact these AI features can have on reality and limits the extent to which users can modify images. “We are concerned that there is a big story in photography and that the way people perceive photographic content as something they can draw on is indicative of reality.”

A different approach

One way the company does this is by including any edits made to a photo with metadata from Apple Intelligence’s Clean Up app in the photos for that image. This is something I talked about at length with a fellow Android user, because I wanted to know if this approach to understanding whether or not a photo has been altered by AI is specific to Apple, or used by Google as well. and Samsung. It turns out that Apple is one of the few smartphone makers taking this approach, with Google opting for metadata changes on Pixels that aren’t as clear to end users – something I don’t like. Wish it existed on all social media platforms and smartphone software like photo editing. enters new, murkier waters.

It’s not just in the area of ​​photo editing that Apple has adopted this thoughtful, even overly cautious, approach. “When you look at experiments like Image Playground, we made sure that the images we generated were not photorealistic,” Federighi said. “Not because the underlying model couldn’t generate something photorealistic, but because we never wanted anyone to have any confusion if Joanna was really wearing that fuzzy hat?

It’s an interesting look at how Apple views AI-based photo editing, and stands in stark contrast to Samsung’s claim that “There is no real picture.” Many have questioned Apple’s approach to AI, with Apple Intelligence taking its time to arrive on devices. Some believe Apple is late to the party and playing catch-up, but time will tell whether the company’s personalized approach is well-received by users, or whether its limited AI tools just scratch the surface. makes the same itch as the stunning, reality-altering approach of others.

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