The ‘Reimagine’ Feature on Google’s New Pixel 9 Phones Makes It Trivial to Create Deepfakes

Chris Welch, in a thread on Threads:

The “Reimagine” feature on Google’s new Pixel 9 lineup is incredible. It’s so impressive that testing it has left me feeling uneasy on multiple occasions.

With a simple prompt, you can add things to photos that were never there. And the company’s Gemini AI makes it look astonishingly realistic. This all happens right from the phone’s default photo editor app. In about five seconds.

Are we ready to go down this path? Now that the embargo has lifted, let me show you some examples. Buckle up.

The images you’ll see in this thread are all straight out of Google Photos after going through Reimagine / Magic Editor. They were never touched up by Photoshop or Lightroom.

On the one hand, this technology becoming ubiquitous feels inevitable. On the other hand, these examples from Welch are disturbing.

At The Verge, Jess Weatherbed writes:

Just because you have the estimable ability to clock when an image is fake doesn’t mean everyone can. Not everyone skulks around on tech forums (we love you all, fellow skulkers), so the typical indicators of AI that seem obvious to us can be easy to miss for those who don’t know what signs to look for — if they’re even there at all. AI is rapidly getting better at producing natural-looking images that don’t have seven fingers or Cronenberg-esque distortions.

Maybe it was easy to spot when the occasional deepfake was dumped into our feeds, but the scale of production has shifted seismically in the last two years alone. It’s incredibly easy to make this stuff, so now it’s fucking everywhere. We are dangerously close to living in a world in which we have to be wary about being deceived by every single image put in front of us.

That’s seemingly where we’re headed. Everyone alive today has grown up in a world where you can’t believe everything you read. Now we need to adapt to a world where that applies just as equally to photos and videos. Trusting the sources of what we believe is becoming more important than ever.

See also: “Elmo drunk driving and holding a beer.”

★ Monday, 26 August 2024