I’ve been looking at some of the things Google announced this week. Whilst some of the things are quite interesting – like the Pixel Tablet and stand – others are just plain puzzling.
I understand that Google was is trying to flex and show off their AI abilities, the new Magic Editor that they announced doesn’t sit well with me. I take photos to preserve memories. I can look back through my photo library and memories are triggered by the visuals, even the ones that are less than perfect.
Showing off the capabilities of their new photo editor, Google talked about how we want things to always look good. That’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s not how life is. Not every day is sunny and bright, but Google is giving us the ability to make it appear like it is. Take a cloudy overcast day, there may be some really fun things that happen but it looks a bit grey. Google wants to make it easy for us to edit that photo and make it sunny with ease. It creates a disconnect with reality. The images of our memories won’t match.
Social media already causes a lot of people to live their life in a highly edited false way. Making it easier to trick ourselves into remembering something in a completely different way isn’t necessarily a good thing.