No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke.

cley_faye , 11 minutes ago

This is only a threat to people that took random picture at face value. Which should not have been a thing for a long while, generative AI or not.

The source of an information/picture, as well as how it was checked has been the most important part of handling online content for decades. The fact that it is now easier for some people to make edits does not change that.

hperrin , 28 minutes ago

We literally lived for thousands of years without photos. And we’ve lived for 30 years with Photoshop.

Treedrake , 30 minutes ago

This reaffirms my wish to go back to monkey.

frengo_ , 1 hour ago

I wish tools to detect if an image is real or not become as easy to use and good as these AI tools bullshit.

MagicShel , 1 hour ago

We need to bring back people who can identify shops from some of the pixels and having seen quite a few shops in their time.

zecg , 1 hour ago

It’s a shitty toy that’ll make some people sorry when they don’t have any photos from their night out without tiny godzilla dancing on their table. It won’t have the staying power Google wishes it to, since it’s useless except for gags.

But, please, Verge,

It took specialized knowledge and specialized tools to sabotage the intuitive trust in a photograph.

get fucked

Ilovethebomb , 2 hours ago

Meh, those edited photos could have been created in Photoshop as well.

This makes editing and retouching photos easier, and that’s a concern, but it’s not new.

FlihpFlorp , 1 hour ago

Something I heard in the photoshop VS ai argument is it makes an already existing process much faster and almost anyone can do it which increases the shear amount that one person or a group could make almost how a printing press made the production of books so much faster (if you’re in to history)

I’m too tired to take a stance so I’m just sharing some arguments I’ve heard

Ilovethebomb , 48 minutes ago

Making creating fake images even easier definitely isn’t great, I agree with you there, but it’s nothing that couldn’t already be done with Photoshop.

I definitely don’t like the idea you can do this on your phone.

Bimbleby , 3 minutes ago

Exactly, it was already established that pictures from untrusted sources are to be disregarded unless they can be verified by trusted sources.

It is basically how it has been forever with the written press: Just like everyone now has the capability to manipulate a picture. Everyone can write we are being invaded by aliens, but whether we should believe it is another thing.

It might take some time for the general public to learn this, but it should be a focus area of general schooling within the area of source criticism.

stoy , 2 hours ago

TL;DR: The new Reimage feature on the Google Pixel 9 phones is really good at AI manipulation, while being very easy to use. This is bad.

Th4tGuyII , 2 hours ago

Image manipulation has always been a thing, and there are ways to counter it...

But we already know that a shocking amount of people will simply take what they see at face value, even if it does look suspicious.
The volume of AI generated misinformation online is already too damn high, without it getting more new strings in it's bow.

Governments don't seem to be anywhere near on top of keeping up with these AI developments either, so by the law starts accounting for all of this, the damage will be far done already.

Badeendje , 14 minutes ago

On our vacation 2 weeks ago my wife made an awesome picture just with one guy annoyingly in the background. She just tucked him and clicked the button… poof gone, perfect photo.

RageAgainstTheRich , 3 hours ago

Even a few months ago it was hard for people with the knowledge to use AI on photos. I don’t like the idea of this but its unavoidable. There is already so much misinformation and this will make it so much worse.

Alexstarfire , 3 hours ago

Awful title.