I felt like I was opening a can of worms when I asked Samsung about its stance on AI photo editing at Galaxy Unpacked in January. “There is no such thing as a real image,” Patrick Chomet, Samsung’s head of customer experience, told me at the time – a nihilistically tinged soundbite that, to be fair, was part of a nuanced and entirely valid philosophical commentary on the nature of photography (in In the same interview, Chomet rightly spoke about the importance of validating authenticity).
Marques Brownlee recently included Chomet’s quote in a X message highlighting the differing opinions of Samsung, Apple and Google on this topic. Still, all major phone manufacturers end up offering similar editing features (Magic Eraser, Clean Up, AI Eraser, and so on).
For its part, Qualcomm recognizes that AI photo editing is an exciting new challenge, but also one fraught with uncomfortable ethical implications. During a roundtable discussion at the Snapdragon Summit, the company’s Mobile Handset SVP Chris Patrick explained why he believes AI photo editing “isn’t as simple as a real image and a fake image.”
LOL “What is a photo?”Samsung: “Actually, there is no such thing as a real photo”Google: “authentic to your memory and to the larger context, but perhaps not authentic until a certain millisecond”Apple: “a personal celebration of something that really happened” https://t.co/mwy3Yb9KaYSeptember 23, 2024
“It’s an interesting question, because the human brain is not digital,” the former engineer explains. “If you observe the sunset outside, you are not observing the sunset without context. You know where you are. You know what you smell. You know what you hear, you know what you feel. You know what a sunset looks like, right? That’s all part of how you perceive the space.”
“So when we capture an image, should it just be the raw response from the sensor? Or is it right to add context to the way that image is created? I’m not an expert. I don’t have a PhD on this topic, but I do think it’s not as simple as a real image and a fake image. I think context matters, and making the most of the whole situation is an accurate reflection of what the eye and brain are doing as well.”
When you observe the sunset outside, you are not observing the sunset without context.
Chris Patrick
“(However),” Patrick continued, “if there is a photo of Rui (Guo, Honor CMO, also present at the roundtable) and I on the moon, it should be very clear that that is not in fact a photo of Rui and me on the moon. That’s not correct – that’s manipulated.
“So it is very clear to us that there must be a mechanism to distinguish the other extreme – those manipulated images – for people. We are building incredible technology together, but we want to ensure that it does not ultimately have a destructive impact, leaving people unable to tell the difference between truth and fiction.”
More AI is coming
Honor CMO Rui Guo was also present at the Snapdragon Summit roundtable, having just announced that the Honor Magic 7 Pro – which will be released in Europe next year – will be launched with the first generative AI portrait enhancement on the device. Does the company use AI to make portraits look better than they actually are? Or is the idea to emulate real-life details that Honor’s hardware can’t capture on its own?
“On the one hand,” Guo explains, “we need to make sure that the photo itself is good according to modern consumer standards. Everyone knows what a good and bad photo is. But on the other hand, we certainly want to maintain the authenticity of the photo. We’re not trying to Photoshop the photo for the consumer, right? We must ultimately give the power to the users.”
And I think that’s the crux of the matter. Tools like Magic Eraser and Clean Up become ethically dubious when users – or, more worryingly, politicians – try to pass off tampered images as real, but as a way to occasionally remove strangers from family vacation photos, AI photo editing has become popular for many people an option. , undeniably useful.
Neither Qualcomm nor Honor are pushing these tools on their consumers – if you want to take a photo the same way you’ve always done it, you still can. Instead, companies give users the freedom to choose how they capture moments that matter to them. Sure, it’s a can of worms, but as Qualcomm’s Chris Patrick noted, “it’s not as simple as a real image and a fake image.”