Apple says out loud what everyone thinks about AI applied to photos

What is a photo? It seems like a childish question, but it is precisely the question that Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software, and his team asked themselves while developing Apple Intelligence. They are afraid that AI will be abused in photo editing“I ended up turning photography into a fantasy.”

Apple Intelligence is going to be released with iOS 18.1, in the coming weeks, and Apple recognizes that The AI ​​tools that the photo editor will include are quite basiccompared to the competition. But it is a business decision, not a limitation.

In one interview in The Wall Street JournalCraig Federighi assures that “our products, our mobile phones, are used a lot. For us it is important to help provide accurate information, not fantasy.”

When a photo with AI stops being a photo

iOS 18.1 will include an AI feature called “Cleanup,” which allows you to remove objects and people from photos. It is a basic tool that Pixel phones and others have had for a long time, but even something so simple has generated an internal debate at Apple.

“Do we want it to be easy to remove that water bottle or that microphone? Because that water bottle was there when you took the photo,” he wonders Craig Federighi.

They assure that they have included this function because many people ask for it to remove things that do not change the essence of the photo, but at the moment they are not going to include more advanced artificial intelligence tools, such as those that allow you to insert objects or change the photo using a phrase of text.

“Apple is concerned about the impact of AI on how people view photographic content as indicative of reality,” explains the company executive.

Apple’s doubts are the same that most of us have. To what extent, when someone shows you a photo, are you seeing a real image captured by the camera, or a fantasy.

Google’s Magic Editor tool not only allows you to remove elements from a photo using AI. Also add them. You can sit next to a lion, or walk through Antarctica. You can change a rainy day for a sunny one, or fill the photo with people who don’t exist.

If a family member or friend shows you a photo of their vacation in Ibiza… Do you want to see a real image, or an idealized image? Maybe your friend just removed one person from the photo, changed the color of their shirt, or removed some clouds to add some sunshine.

It’s a nice photo, but I don’t want to see that. I’m sorry but I want to see reality, as it is. To that man who was passing by, getting in the way, or who was cloudy that day. Because a photo idealized by AI may be more spectacular, but it is a fantasy, and therefore, as a photograph, as a capture of reality, it has no interest.

It is the great internal debate that Apple is now having: where is the border that delimits whether a photo retouched with AI maintains its essence, or becomes a fantasy which loses all value as a photo. Unfortunately, it appears that no other AI company has any interest in this debate. The only thing they are looking for is to literally shove AI through our eyes…

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Tags: Photography, Artificial intelligence