Common feature packaged in with everyday technology

There was a time, not so long ago, when such tinkering would require expensive software and even hardware.

But the ability to call on AI to make edits is becoming an increasingly common feature packaged in with everyday consumer technology. One of the hallmarks of Google’s latest Pixel smartphone range is “Best Take”, a feature driven by a combination of different AI models.

Together, they analyse images, check timestamps to find sequential photos, search for signals such as poses as facial expressions, and then suggest images that create the best composite.

The resultant image may not be entirely fake, but it uses real photographs to create something that isn’t real.

Samsung has also gone to considerable lengths to explain the generative AI used in its Galaxy phone cameras, explaining how the feature helps with filtering, modification and optimisation to remove unwanted shadows and reflections. Defending its use of AI, Patrick Chomet, the tech firm’s head of customer experience, told TechRadar earlier this year there is “no such thing” as a real picture.

“You can try to define a real picture by saying ‘I took that picture’, but if you used AI to optimise the zoom, the autofocus, the scene – is it real?” he stressed. Or is it all filters? There is no real picture, full stop.”

The same controversies are true of Photoshop, software used by tens of millions of creative professionals worldwide.

Some have heralded generative AI features that were introduced last year as a game-changing advance that makes it easier to edit images.

But its pitfalls were exposed earlier this year when an Australian news network used an image of a female MP that was edited to reveal her midriff and make her breasts look bigger.

The programme’s news director blamed Photoshop’s “automation”, although Adobe later stressed the changes in question would have required “human intervention” and approval.