Smartphone photos are getting faker. Uh-oh?

Google’s new $700 Pixel 8 lets you use artificial intelligence to add or remove elements from your images. It’s not clear we really need this. Smartphone cameras became extremely powerful over the last five years. Their leap in quality was largely driven by advancements in computational photography, a technology that uses algorithms, artificial intelligence and sensors to produce sharp, lifelike pictures. Now we all can shoot stunning images that rival the work of professionals.

Google’s AI photo editor is part of a wave of generative AI, which became popular in the last year after the release of the ChatGPT chatbot, which produces text in response to prompts. Image-based generative AI tools like DALL-E, Midjourney and Adobe Firefly also let people create pictures by simply typing in a prompt, such as “a cat sleeping on a windowsill.”

Continuing my tradition when testing many smartphone cameras, I used the Pixel 8 to snap photos of my dogs — Max, a corgi, and Mochi, a brown Labrador — and then applied the AI.In one photo of Max sitting on a large rock, I wanted to remove a citation form from a police officer for letting my dogs run off leash without a permit in an off-leash dog park. In the Google Photos app, I tapped the Magic Editor button and traced an outline around the piece of paper.

Google includes a Regenerate button for when you are unhappy with the results, which I tried. But it yielded equally off-putting results each time. Editing photos for clarity and brightness improves an image without altering its substance. But artificially adding elements to a photo crosses a threshold, rendering an image a fake. Using these AI tools to produce and share photos could contribute to the spread of fake media online when misinformation is already rampant and it’s hard to know what to trust.

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