AI is fixing — and ruining – our photos

25:09So some of the pipeline does raw data on the Apple iPhone, and some of it starts converting it to images so that it can start merging. Geometry, corrections, those kind of things. For instance, your ultrawide camera will have a lot of corrections because otherwise it looks like a crazy fisheye lens, basically, right? And then, yeah, we noticed a few years ago, like the main camera especially, which is the one that needs to gather the most light, you know, the camera people use for 99 % of the time, it has more color fringing than it has in the past. And I think we talked about this in person briefly, Neelai.

25:37I was like, no, like the crazy thing that's happening here is they just, there's a realization there. They're like, oh, wait, it might be color fringing, but we can just fix that in the pipeline. If we get more light in, we can just correct that out. And the smartphone will make up for what would traditionally be considered the worst photographic lens, right? It just becomes a data problem, essentially. And that is coming up a little bit. And I wrote a little bit. I just published a review of the iPhone 16 yesterday. And I wrote, look, you've got to get used to processing. Because gadgets in our phones, I can see them going in one direction.

26:15David, I feel like you're the pixel fold kind of guy, but like you're going to get devices that are thinner and folding. And sometimes they fold three ways now. In China, I hear the devices are folding three ways. It's going that way. We're not going to opt for thicker phones and bigger cameras. And to make cameras work that are smaller and thinner and tinier and fit into like very small headsets and Ray-Ban glasses, we're going to need more processing because the sensors, the images aren't going to get any better. That's just physics. so i fully believe that you know as we go towards slimmer and foldable iphones or whatever our output on something like a process zero image is probably going to get objectively worse um that's just the way it is but old-fashioned photography in that way that's just i don't know how long that's going to be around on these kind of devices as they get smarter and smarter because they'll just start relying more on the fact that they're magic hyper powerful computers and they're not going to rely on the fact that they're good at collecting light because they're just not Wait, so let me ask you about that.

27:15Let me send you all the way down the existential rabbit hole. This is where I live. Welcome to the basement with me. At the end of this, right, the hardware is just there to collect light. And everything else happens in the processing stack. Everything else is an average of values from the past, right? is that do you see that all the way at the end that it you just spin the dial all the way on the path that we're on and we don't really care if the sensor is any good or the lens is any good as long as we can collect as much massive light as possible see i think that's a great philosophical question because if you come down to it everything you can solve it the way the samsung moon photo situation happens most of the world is completely been captured before and done before if you train a good enough model with a bad enough sensor you can probably take photos of 99.95 of the things out there and they'll be really good so like i don't know that seems kind of like a reality that we're heading towards where the processing is just simply good enough and the reality doesn't the reality of capturing images just needs to correspond to like what the internal logic can can cohere together and i personally philosophically find that a really big problem i want to make a camera that um like if you go to the what is a photo thing i was talking to ben about this i was like we should probably think about what we consider to be a photo and to me it is an image that's generated largely majority, at least by photons that you have captured at a moment in space and time.

28:36But I'm not sure if that is going to be the case. I think in the future, some cameras, maybe not all of them, but some cameras are going to increasingly rely on data sets of what the world should look like and what images should look like and just use data, use light as data, not as like a visual aid as much. What is halide for all the way at the end of that road? Like what's, what's your job when we get all the way to the end of that? I mean, like the invention of the automobile didn't put an end to horses. It's just horses were allowed to be this fun thing. You had to look at them and ride them and stuff.

29:10Right. But as far as utility for every day, you know, people stopped keeping barns, I guess. um and i mean like look uh you know photography didn't end painting uh painting the reason people look at paintings is because the amount of skill and craftsmanship that goes into it and being able to work within these constraints and again it was really eye-opening last summer uh shooting analog because there is just something about an analog photo and actually the removal of details right and uh so i don't know if anyone tried to watch one of these high frame rate movies like the hobbit at 48 frames per second or that HDR Will Smith movie, the one with his clone.

29:48What was it called? Gemini Man. There we go. And it was ultra high frame rate HDR. And what ends up happening with movies is when you shoot high frame rate ultra realism, it breaks the magic because your mind isn't able to fill in the details. And it turns out 24 frames per second with a slow shutter, it feels more dreamlike and you're able to suspend disbelief, right? Right. And so with photography, there's just something about a photo that is less perfect, that feels magical about it. So I think there's always going to be that as an art form. But as far as something that you're going to just tap a button and get a nice photo, I think that we are smart enough that we're never going to enter that kind of battle with the world's most valuable company.

30:30Well, let me say this. Just to put your definition in the test. Photons you collected at a moment in space and time. Right. I buy that. That's a pretty good definition. Does that count if you're taking nine photos and merging them? That moment is extended to nine captures, right? Yeah, so I think so. The thing is, let's say, and the same thing goes for cleaning up. Let's say you use AI cleanup to erase a part of the photo. I still think it's a photo. But once you fill that in with the majority of a cleanup feature, so like 50 % or more of the pixels become filled in by a model, I feel like it ceases to be a photo in a meaningful way because it has now been filled in by a data set.

31:06You guys are making a tool. It sounds very much like you're focused on the creative and artistic aspects of photography. There's a whole other conversation about can we trust these images that exist in the world? Have you looked at the various watermarking features from C2PA that say, actually, this happened, right? This photo of Donald Trump, it occurred. We're going to mark it. We're going to send it to Getty. Getty is going to know this was real. Those photos were marked at the camera level when they went to Getty. Have you looked at doing that? Is that something you're allowed to do on iOS?

31:36That's all bullshit. Am I allowed to swear? Like, if not, it's like right down. Okay, good. You are allowed to swear. So, all right. Everything that Adobe is pushing as far as like content authenticity is, it's just, it's like DivX and anti-DVD kind of stuff in the 2000s. It's like, if you look at it, the ability to just strip the metadata, the fact that you can just point your camera at a screen and take a photo, like it's not going to do anything other than convince people to sign up for Creative Cloud and use Adobe products. I don't know I don't know how much deeper you want to get in that but I don't think it's a useful use of time although they do have a verification feature where I think it does like a signature of like you can I think kind of like CSAM detection like it'll get a signature of the photo you can drag and drop it to UI and whoever first posted it like it'll tell you who did that that's pretty cool but the rest of the stuff is just a waste of time I'm just curious this is right next to the creative part of how much can I change this or how much data processing can I do is the, how much can I trust this?

32:38And it feels like both of those are unsolved. Yeah. When we launched process zero, like I thought, I was talking to Ben, I was like, can we use the fact that we shoot a JPEG that is the process zero component and like the raw, the sensor, again, the sensor, single shot raw Bayer data as sort of a proof of provenance, like a proof like that. There are not a lot of data sets of generative AI, if any, I haven't found any, at least that work on raw files. Right. But consider conceivably you could totally do it. that's the thing so it's it's it's not a good you know it'd be a fig leaf of authenticity it would be like look there is a raw file you can see that it was actually taken but you know like it's still it's just such a losing battle we at some point you philosophically as a as a photographer or camera app maker or both or uh esteemed member of photography common sections you just go through the same existential crisis and you just realize okay there's nothing stopping this and can i just to back up to what you're saying about like editing photos and where's the line that you're going to draw.

33:37So in 2016, there was a famous National Geographic photographer, Steve McCurry. And so he got into hot water because people noticed one of his award-winning photos was actually different on his website because there's like a dude in the background who wasn't in the final award-winning photo. And people started digging into it and like basically he would use what is iOS 18's object removal feature before it existed. He did that equivalent kind of editing. And this was a huge like you don't do that if you're actually taking photos. So and I guess this is also a question for you as journalists. Like when you at what point when you're doing like an interview or you're transcribing, you're pulling quotes, at what point is it OK to remove the likes and the butts?

34:21You'll be doing a lot of that with me. And thank you. But at what point are you then editorializing what you're trying to capture and telling a story that actually didn't occur? And effectively, you know, everyone has to have that level of journalistic integrity if they want to call it a photo. So David and I are both going to answer on three and we're going to see if we have the same answer. Okay. Actually, I'll let David answer. My quick version of that is that's norms. That's professional norms. That's what you're describing. Right. This guy was a professional photographer. He entered a professional photography contest.

34:54He broke the rules. He got kicked out. They got in trouble. You're a journalist. You get a bunch of quotes. You go two sideways. you're over the line, right? Like the journalist club, if it still exists, we'll get mad at you and your reputation will suffer. If you're a Getty photographer, there's a list of rules of things you're allowed to edit. And most of them are like, you can change exposure. And that's about it, right? You can do some vignetting. If you look at New York Times photos, all they're allowed to do is vignette. So they're all just vignetted to hell and back because that's the only button they get.

35:26So like that's professional norms. I don't know what consumer norms are going to be. And what we're seeing is an explosion of consumer photography. And that, I think, is really challenging. I don't know, David, what's your answer? I think about the same. I mean, there's been a big discussion this year about how people transcribe Donald Trump. There's been all this stuff about sane washing Donald Trump where he'll go on like a nine minute ramble of nonsense. And then a reporter will essentially try to make it make sense, which on the one hand is like good, useful journalism. Like, here are the words that he was trying to say.

36:01On the other hand, it makes somebody who doesn't make any sense make some sense. And I think it's a complicated thing. Like at what point is my job to make something make as much sense as possible so I can help my reader understand? And at what point is my job to represent something as it was in all its messiness? And it's like, I think it is kind of a perfect analogy for what we're trying to do with photography. And I don't have great answers because it's especially when it's messy, how un-messy you're supposed to make it is really complicated. And really, the question is, can you make everybody believe in the professional norm?

36:37And the answer is obviously no. So I guess the closest that we have around ethics right now is Apple's decision that they're not going to allow fully generative AI in iOS 18. And there was the interview with Gruber where they're talking like, OK, we're going to generate cartoons, but we're not going to generate photorealistic stuff. And so that's nice when you have someone who is, you know, not enabling outright bad actions. Although then you have someone like Google, who's also letting you like, yeah, just change the background, type in what you want. That does like remind me of like that amazing quote that Neil I got from Apple's John McCormack that basically was like, okay, we believe a photo is a thing that really happened, which is still not going as far as saying like a photo is a thing you capture with a camera or is light that is captured.

37:22It is a thing that happened, which totally fits in the model of having a generative future where there is a super great Apple model that will just basically fill in the blanks if the image data isn't good enough. It just needs to confirm that a thing has actually happened. So it's like, yeah, like surely we will continue to have journalistic standards and there will be a few of these things like C2PA to work in their niches. but I mean, there's no stopping the train that's heading down the tracks of like the absolute apocalypse of like what the meaning, the meaningfulness of photos on the internet.

37:54I truly think if I look at my daughter, she's one and a half years old now. When she's a teenager, I don't think she will believe any single image she sees on the internet. I think the piece of this thing is lost in a lot of the conversation, I think is like, we talk a lot about the sort of really high stakes photos. And we talk a lot about like the photos of a serial number, right? But I think like, Sebastian, to your point, you have a young kid. I think I have a young kid. Neil, I has young kids. Ben, I don't know. I got one. He's got hand, foot, and mouth disease right now. So yeah. Yeah. Good times all around.

38:28But I think like, Sebastian, to your point, your kid will probably grow up in a world where they don't believe photos they see on the internet. I think that's probably right. But the question of like, will they believe photos about themselves from when they were kids is the other part of this that I think is like complicated And it's such a like normal everyday use case we don't talk about in this context. But the question of like, when I take pictures of my kid, what responsibility in air quotes do I have to like truth and honesty versus like taking a fun picture of my child having fun? I feel like is such a like mainstream every single person use case that we just don't talk about enough because it feels mealy.

39:13But I don't know. And as you guys think about Halide, like people download this stuff in part because they want to make beautiful art that hangs in museums and in part because they want to take better pictures that are kids. And like, what is the job there in this world? All of my son's photos are in Native Raw. So I can show him the receipts afterwards. He can develop the negatives himself. Exactly. Yeah. No, but that's a really good point. On his 18th birthday, here, son, I've made you some negatives. You know, it's important that every dad has a talk with his son about noise reduction. It's a dangerous world out there, and you don't have to be prepared.

39:48Yeah. But, I mean, to that point, like, some part of me feels like, you know, we're going to go back and look at, we're going to recognize this era of mobile photography for looking a certain way. That's just a fact. and we're recognizing the first generation of Instagram photos by the heavy filters which also means people are going to look at the first generation of Instagram photos and be like oh these are real there's no generative because you can see by how bad these filters are this was before the end times of photographic integrity which is fascinating to me by the way that those fake sepia filters are going to go down in time as like a symbol of authenticity which at the time were derided as being universally deeply real photos deeply unreal yeah deeply real photos must be real and I think we we'd love to kind of in a same in a way provide that niche too because we want to offer that extra tool that just gives you a a more authentic shot because it's a bit more true to like what an old-fashioned camera might have captured it has a bit less of that process look going on um but two like i i also believe those photos are more representative of your memories because they they are more like the way you remember a moment like when i added my photos actually i tend to make the sunsets warmer and the cozy times nicer and the time when I walked in Tokyo all alone 3am bluer and more cyberpunk-y because that's just the way it felt and I think those aren't perfect representations of reality and that greatest common denominator photography thing is kind of what's making people pull towards that a bit more and maybe also ironically making them pull more towards generative things or more creative ways altering photos because they're deeply unsatisfied with how perfectly photos represent reality when they're sensing reality around them, but not the world that they perceive per se emotionally.

41:33All right, we got to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to talk to Alison Johnson about how to take pictures of your kids with AI. We'll be right back.

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45:03All right, we're back. So The Verge's Alison Johnson has been reviewing all of these AI phone cameras for us all summer, and she decided to run an experiment on herself that I find very fun. She basically wanted to go all the way in and figure out what life is like when you just lean into the AI-ness of your phone. All the things it can do for you, all the ways it can change your photos, all the upgrades and cool processing things it can do. Just what if you didn't have any existential crises about AI photos and cameras and just bought in? What would happen? I have been excited for weeks to hear about the results of this experiment.

45:43And Allison is here now to tell me all about it. Allison, hello. Hello. We're back to talk about phone cameras because that's what you and I do on this show, is just talk about our feelings about phone cameras. I love it. I'm here for it. I think that might be the official mission statement of VergeCast at this point, which is weird. We make an audio product about cameras is a thing that I never really thought about. Let's talk about photos for a while. So we've been looking for different ways to talk about this stuff. Sometimes it's just like me and I having an existential crisis on the Vergecast.

46:15But you went out and actually like tried to live out this experiment a little bit in what the future of photography looks like. Tell me a little bit about this experiment you've been running. Yeah. So the idea was, what if I put myself in this headspace of I am using this phone camera to take not photos, but memories and just sort of like ran with that for a little while. I carried around the Pixel 9 Pro, the memory-making machine that it is, and just kind of set out to, like, you know, I take a thousand pictures of my kid anyway, but I was, like, especially on a mission for, you know, about a week.

47:00So we went to this science fair. It was kind of outdoors, indoors, very kind of steampunky, cool situation. We went to the park, rode in one of those little fake stationary Jeeps. He loves that. I went to Starbucks. He's a good sport and goes with me to get my coffee. So all of the usual things. I just took photos for a week and brought them into Google Photos afterwards and pushed myself to use the tools that I probably wouldn't have done anyway, like the Reimagine. you know, take things out of the frame, just kind of put myself in an uncomfortable position to like, try and use as much of the AI as I could.

47:49Well, so it makes me think of a conversation you and I had, this is probably almost a year ago at this point, where we were talking about the thing that happens when you go in and edit a photo, and you remember you've edited the photo, and that something is sort of inexorably changed when you edit the photo. That maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, maybe it doesn't really matter, but somewhere in your brain, the fact that you moved stuff around inside of the photo becomes attached to that photo. And I feel like a year later, we're even deeper into that theory being the way that this works. So I'm very curious to hear how all of this went.

48:27But give me the setup, how you were thinking about approaching this experiment. Because I feel like I want to make memories, not photos, is a very... beautiful, high-minded thing to say that we can interrogate forever. But I'm curious if you're like, I want to actually live out this definition. And I think it's Google in particular, right, that has said a camera is for memories, not for photos. So you're like, I want to live in the universe Google imagines. Like, how do you set yourself up to do that? Yeah. It was mostly in the back half, like editing the photos. So kind of just went into Google Photos on the phone.

49:02And that's where you get the like reimagine tool and all the AI stuff. So it was like a very uncomfortable territory for me because I really don't like edit phone photos at all. I just kind of like put all my faith in the computational photography process. So this was an exercise and like sitting down and kind of I had to kind of clear my mind and be like, okay, what did this moment feel like versus what's here? And sometimes it was obvious. It was like, well, this person was in the frame and my memory is of my child in this situation, and this person's distracting. So I would take them out. But then I pushed myself beyond that to kind of be like, is there something I would add to the scene that would make it feel more kind of like express how like magical or whatever it felt at the time.

49:59Because I think that happens a lot too when you're taking pictures of your kid or like, this is such a special moment. And then you go back and there's just like snot all over their nose and they look kind of annoyed. You're like, oh, okay, we missed the mark on that one. But I can imagine to all of that stuff that it makes sense that that all comes up in the editing process, right? You sit there and you're like, how did I feel and how does this photo feel? And I want to interrogate that because I think it's really interesting. But I can also imagine that you would start thinking differently about the kinds of photos you're taking and even like the way you're setting up to take those pictures, right?

50:36Like I'm thinking about, I was out with my son yesterday. He loves trains and all he wants to do is there's a walking path near a train track and he just wants to stand there and wait for trains. And a train goes by and he yells and dances and then it leaves and then he just goes more choo-choo and then we wait until there's another train and we do that for hours and i was standing there like when he would get really excited about a train and sort of stop paying attention to me i would like back up and take a picture of him or and i was like running around trying to get the angle just right and try to get the the train in the exact right spot and i had this thought of like oh maybe i don't need to do any of this like i'm just gonna stand here and just sort of point my camera in like his vague direction and then worry about it later but also maybe like, do I even need this picture in an AI?

51:23Like, I don't know. It just, it starts to mess your head in terms of just like when you decide to hit the shutter button in the first place. Did you have any of that experience? I did. And it was like more forcing myself to take a photo when I normally would have been like, ah, this isn't really going to work. Oh, interesting. Someone's in the way or, you know, I was like, no, I'll take the picture anyway and see what we can do with AI. So that was kind of more my experience. So you're kind of like maybe there's a good picture in here somewhere. Yeah. And all I have to do is take the bad one and see what we can do later.

51:59Right. It forced me to take more shots, I guess. Yeah. I'm like a classic parent photographer where my kid was like – he was on a bridge in this little park. And I'm like waiting for the perfect moment when he's going to like come running back. And he's in, you know, framed perfectly in the middle of the bridge and like just didn't cooperate. You know, like he didn't want to do that. But I'm like, oh, I'll take pictures anyway and see what I can get away with. Okay. So and then take me through the editing process a little bit. You know, you mentioned you're not really a phone editor. I think most people aren't.

52:38I'll do occasional like one edit, a little bit of cropping, a little bit of straightening, maybe like mess with the saturation every now and then. But I think most people just like you take 10, you pick the best one and you put it on Instagram. Like that is that is the pipeline we've all been taught at this point. But tell me about the process of going into these photos and you open one up in this headspace of what is the memory here? This feels like a very like philosophical thing to go through every time. Yeah. Yeah, it was odd and it was uncomfortable, honestly. But yeah, just kind of taking myself back in the moment and like opening up those photos.

53:17And I really had to like sit with it for a minute because I was like, well, this is what I remember. Like it was just like this, you know, he was standing, my husband was standing here holding our child and we were looking at something. And then to kind of like push myself a little bit more, like the one I came up with is like one of us is always carrying this massive diaper bag like 100 % of the time like a pack mule. And my husband had it, you know, the strap around his shoulder in this photo. And I was like, well, you know, I don't like remember the diaper bag. Like it's just there like furniture all the time.

53:59So I took that out. You sent me a bunch of the photos that you took, and I'm looking at them now trying to guess which ones you're talking about. And there's one. It's your husband. He's holding your kid in his right arm, and they're looking at machinery of some kind, it looks like. This looks like a very old printing press is kind of what they're both poking at. Yeah. And all I see on your husband is T-shirt. Yeah. But you're saying there was a diaper bag, a strap of a diaper bag. Am I thinking about the right picture? Am I guessing correctly? Yes, that's the one. Yeah. Yeah, like there's a big black strap and it's, I don't know, it's not like that distracting or anything.

54:32You look at it, you're like, yeah, that's the kind of bag you carry around if you're hauling a kid everywhere. But yeah, it kind of amazes me just how easily you can take something like that out. And it's not a challenge for generative AI. It's just like we got it. Yeah, I'm looking at this now and there's like, there's a little bit of a wrinkle in a black line kind of going across his chest that probably wouldn't be there. But if you had never said that, I looked at a bunch of these photos being like, okay, where did she use AI? What did she do? And this was one where I had nothing. No idea. Wouldn't have ever in a million years have noticed that this wasn't in here.

55:10Especially at Instagram size, right? Like even blowing this thing up as big as it goes. Exactly. I never would have noticed. So what tools do you end up using in all of this? Are you just like in Google Photos playing with the AI stuff? Like what did you find yourself gravitating to messing with these photos? I stuck with Google Photos. And some of these photos were taken on an iPhone in a different session. Sacrilege. I know. Still messed with them in Google Photos. and I uploaded a bunch of them to Instagram, which I also felt weird about. I felt like I was tricking my friends, but... Wait, why?

55:49Tell me more. Why did that feel weird? It feels strange because, you know, like I've changed enough of a lot of these that they're materially like different. You know, I'm like, that is not how that scene looked. One of them is cheesy as hell. There's like birds in the sky that weren't there. That was the one I was like, I really got to try this. Okay, wait. So let me, can I just explain two that I saw that really jumped out to me? There's one that's like the 10 out of 10 on this scale, I would say, is a photo that you took of your son in a park. He's driving like a little, it looks like one of those little like stationary cars that you can just sit in.

56:31You pretty obviously just put a dinosaur in the background. There's just a dinosaur there now. I had to throw that one in to be a little like, okay, something's up here. Please don't believe all of it. I will also say it's not a very good dinosaur. The head is very good. Yeah, the teeth. It just sort of wisps as it turns into its dinosaur body. It has like just kind of too many limbs, I think. Yeah. But the teeth are pretty scary. But it's still, and this is like the sixth photo in a gallery and I just flipped through and it's like, it works. It kind of, it's fun. And like, I don't think it's real, but it does give it a fun like Jurassic Park-y kind of vibe.

57:09I'm into it. And then the other one, which is I think the one you were just describing, he's running through, I want to say a field, but it's like a field next to some kind of industrial machinery. I don't know where you were for all of this, but everybody looks like they're having fun. There's an interesting backstory. Yeah. And so this is one that I actually lingered on for a minute because he's running and he's got his right arm up in the air and the sky is beautiful and blue and there is just this big flock of birds basically right above his head. And if it's not AI, this is like a perfectly reasonable thing to have photographed, right?

57:50Like it would be a lovely shot. Like, I would be very proud of you for getting this photo with this dimensions in these particular ways. But then I found myself wondering, like, okay, are the birds just not there at all? Were the birds, like, off to the side and she just sort of, like, grabbed them and moved them over so that they were directly on top of his head? Or is this just a perfectly timed photo? And I think my hunch is you put the birds there, but I couldn't say that with great confidence. Yeah. Yeah, I did add the birds wholesale. sale there there were no birds there no birds um the funny thing is we were at this they called it a science fair and outside just to the left of where you see lennox there's like a giant iron kind of bird sculpture that flaps its wings when you like pull there's a little pulley it was so cool um and it was it's kind of like either like the sun was hitting just right and it was like so beautiful.

58:50And Lennox is kind of running around after we played with this thing and he just looks super happy. I was like, what could I add that would like make it feel like that moment felt? And I landed on putting these birds in and it is so cheesy and like, I don't enjoy it. Like I look at it, I'm like, you know what? The birds are convincing and this is like a pretty photo, but am I going to like print it and put it on the wall? Like, no, I can't. Well, and that, I mean, this is where you get back to the like, what is the, what is the memory piece of this? Because I think there is some part of this as a viewer that I'm immediately like, oh, what a fun, beautiful day outdoors.

59:37Right. And that's like, you're communicating to me, I think the correct thing I don't know how much the birds really add to that like it's him smiling and running with his arms up that does most of the work in this photo of like communicating the feeling but putting birds there certainly helps and it makes the photo cooler to look at But it doesn't sound like it accomplishes anything for you. And I find that really fascinating. Like, as the person who is likely to look at this photo the most over time, it doesn't sound like this improved. Like, you're not going to look at this with fonder memories because of the AI birds you put there.

1:00:13Yeah. And it really made me think about the whole exercise. Who is this for? Would I make these edits for me so it felt more like what it was in my mind? Or am I trying to portray something on social media that looks more idyllic? And I kept coming back to like, we have kind of a set of expectations from like professional photography. Like if we had hired a professional portrait photographer to kind of follow us around for an afternoon, you would sort of expect, you like suspend your disbelief a little bit. Like, you know, they know how to get the right moment and the right light and like your kids smiling and not screaming and all that stuff.

1:01:01And I think this like one way that these AI tools are maybe intended to be used is to kind of achieve more of that, like without it being a professional photographer. And that's where I was like iffy on it. I was like, I don't think this quite works because there's just too much that you can't like recreate afterward. It has to be there. And like the photos I like are, yeah, the things were just there. Like Lennox is having a great time and the light was right. And that's what makes it a good photo, I think, or like a photo I want to keep looking at, not AI birds. To keep on that photo, I think the thing about what you just said that I find very compelling is the idea that like a professional photographer would know how to get the moment when they're not screaming.

1:01:52And like your memory of this day is it was a very fun day. We all had a really good time, right? I bet Lennox at one point made a sad face or had a bunch of snot everywhere. These things happen. And so I look at this photo and I wonder, okay, what if instead of adding birds, you had just opened his eyes or you had just wiped away the snot on his face? Or I'm thinking about my own kid right now who has a—he's an 18-month-old boy, so his face is a disaster all the time. And right now he just has this little scratch right on the side of his face. and I'm like what if all I did was just get rid of that just sort of yank that away and my memory of it is not the scratch on his face right my memory of it is we all had a really nice day not that he was very snotty for two thirds of it and I wonder like to me there's a very stark line between like I added a dinosaur and I wiped away the snot but I guess somewhere between those things it's very blurry but did you do any of the like tiny AI cleanup rather than kind of using the tools to their full extent.

1:02:55Did that feel any different? Well, so the generative AI in Google Photos right now will not let you do anything to a person. Oh, that's right. And that occurred to me a lot. I was like, well, you know, he looks kind of bummed in this picture. Like, would I want to change that? And the closest you can get is with best take. So I did like take bursts of photos and then you can kind of pick, you know, the expression you want afterward it didn't it's not super effective with just one subject because you could just pick that photo rather than the other it makes a lot more sense if you have multiple people in the scene but yeah that was that was the weird area i was like i don't know i think i would like clean up some boogers and not feel too weird about it in any of that you get to like, well, where do I stop doing this?

1:03:53You know, once you've like cleaned up boogers, you're like, well, what else can I do now? Right. It's a slippery slope to adding dinosaurs. Like it literally is. That's exactly where you end up. You end up in dinosaurs. Yeah. No, it was just a strange thing of like, I would start taking something out of the back. Like there's a stroller in the background and I erased that. I'm like, well, what else can I take out here. And then the thing that is so wild to me, you just end up with this like bland picture. I'm like, I took out all of the clutter and all of the stuff in the background and it just looks, I'm like, well, where were we?

1:04:30You know, some of that stuff adds the context and the kind of like, we were really here doing this thing kind of feeling. And that's what really struck me in this experiment is like, oh, you can just AI your way into a picture that just could be anywhere. Just looks lovely. Totally. Yeah. And there is a weird thing that you see in a lot of sort of overly doctored photos like this, where everything kind of happens in a vacuum, right? Like there's so many photos that if you remove people from the photo, it's like the beach is a perfect example, right? Like if you're at the beach and you're the only person there, it's actually weird, right?

1:05:09Like on a nice beachy day. So then you go in and you do the magic eraser and you get rid of all the stuff. And now it looks like the rapture has happened and you're the only person left on earth at the beach. And there's just, it's a strange thing to try to dial in. And there was a photo in the ones that you shared where Lennox is like, he's playing with a truck on a table and there's like a glass of milk in front of him and there's a blurry person in the background. And this was another one that I struggled to figure out what, if anything, you had done with AI. And I'm curious what the answer is.

1:05:40But I was looking at this and I was like, okay, my immediate instinct would be to remove the glass of milk because it's only like two thirds in frame and it's not really part of it. So it's just a little bit distracting. And then like, okay, maybe I'll get rid of the person in the background. And now I've turned this kind of nice photo of a person living in the world into like a kid at a table in an empty warehouse with nothing. And like, I think I've made the photo worse. Yeah, yeah. That's a conclusion I came to a lot. And actually, so the glass of milk is not real. Oh, really? Yeah, it is AI.

1:06:12Wow, that is a convincing glass of milk. Isn't it? We were at a Starbucks, a fancy Starbucks, you know, the ones where they roast the coffee in front of you. Oh, yeah. He had a little orange juice bottle, which is, I don't know, how you feel about being a parent on Instagram is like loaded with sugar. And I'm like, well, what if I put something in front of him that wasn't so overtly unhealthy, quote unquote? I don't know. I don't care if my kid drinks orange juice. I think orange juice is basically fine. It's so good. Anyway. Don't cancel us, internet. I know. Bad opinions about orange juice. yeah I was like well I'll just put a glass of milk in front of him like he ordered it at Starbucks yeah and it's super convincing I was like well that's wild and yeah you can go like one of the pictures where he's in that little jeep in the park the one that doesn't have any dinosaurs just has a park behind him I actually took out like there's like this building that has the bathrooms it's like brick and it doesn't it doesn't look like offensive it was just kind of in the background i was like well maybe i can just put some trees there and it's a thousand percent convincing but then it's also like it's it just looks like some trees like it doesn't tell me about anything about like where we were yeah it does this the picture becomes very kind of generic in that way.

1:07:42Yeah. One thing I find myself wondering about this process is how you'll think about these photos differently over time. A, whether you'll go back to the photo of Lennox with the birds in six months, a year, or five years, or 50 years, and remember that those birds weren't there, or if you'll forget and think they're part of the photos and maybe that's success in a certain way. But also, whether changing the photos changes how you'll remember them in a way that feels weird. It's like so much of what we talk about with photography is it's a documentation of a thing. And if you change the thing, you're going to change your memory of the thing.

1:08:22And that all gets very hairy and philosophical. But even just like removing people from something is going to change how you remember that experience when you go back to the photo. I don't know. Are you thinking about that at all as you're going through being like, how do I how do I make this photo what I remembered versus what I want to remember it as many, many years from now or how I will remember it? Yeah. Personally, my Google Photos is my journal at this point. I haven't written in a journal in a long time. If I'm trying to remember, where did we go when we were in Portland 10 years ago?

1:08:57I'd go to Google Photos and that's where the answer is. So I did come across some examples of like, I was taking a friend, like a friend of ours was kind of half in the frame. And I had a picture of Lennox and my husband and I was like, well, I'll take him, our friend out of the picture and it just fills it in, you know, perfectly. I would never think there was another human there. I was like, well, am I going to remember that we were there with our friends on that day? Or Or am I going, is that like lost to time if I take him out of this photo? I started feeling really strange about it and I undid it.

1:09:38Yeah, there's a little bit of like, are you lying to your journal in all of that, which is very strange. Yeah. Oh, which I never lied to my journal. I would never do that. No, who would? Yeah, and then figuring out where that scale begins and ends is kind of the same thing. It's that same slippery slope, right, where you're saying, okay. is remembering that my friends were there an important part of this memory? Sometimes. Sometimes probably not. But sometimes, yes. Is remembering that, you know, whatever, he had a runny nose? Definitely not. But like, those are, it's just strange to think you're making those decisions now also about the future.

1:10:20Like, maybe you will want to remember that you were there with your friends. Maybe it doesn't seem so significant now, but it will later. And those are just making that decision now is an interesting way to like, you're changing the way that future you remembers this without any real knowledge of how it might do it. Right. It's uncomfortable. It is. Uncomfortable is exactly the right word for it. Like even when it's useful, it still feels kind of uncomfortable. Yeah, exactly. Did you have any of these that you came out of it and felt better about? I keep thinking about that thing you said at the beginning where you're like, I took photos I wouldn't have taken otherwise because I'm like, I bet there is a good photo in here somewhere.

1:10:59I find that very compelling. Did you have any of those experiences, anything where you came out of it and you were like, I have made this into something out of nothing? Yes and no. I have only reinforced my belief that you cannot edit a bad photo into a good photo. Even with AI? Yeah, that's true of Photoshop. that's true of putting birds and, you know, AI birds in your photo. Like nothing's gonna, I tried, I tried to make some just bad photos look better and they're still stinkers. But the thing I am convinced now is I will take more photos where there's someone in the frame and I kind of wish they would move out of the way, but you know, you can't ask them to move.

1:11:45Right. Or I'll take more of those photos now and just remove them from the background because I don't feel bad about that. And especially if it's like someone else's kid is in the background and it's a picture, you know, I can't get my kid to stay still forever. So I take the picture anyway and then I can remove the other kids so I'm not putting them on my Instagram. I'm like, I actually feel fine about that. Yeah. So that's where I landed. That feels like a good use case. And especially like the thing that immediately comes to mind there is like whenever if you go to the zoo or whatever, you're inevitably going to take pictures of something with a thousand strangers right on right on all sides of it.

1:12:34Yeah. And you can make a case that actually not only are you making your photos better, you're kind of doing like a public service to the world by removing those people from the photos. Right. You're fighting the surveillance state with AI. Right. I love that. Not today. Exactly. So how do you feel at the end of this experiment? You're, like you said, a person who takes a lot of photos anyway. Do you take anything away from this that makes you think you might act or operate differently with a camera from now on? I think the big one is I might rely on it more for those photos when I'm like, well, I couldn't reframe this.

1:13:13And there's someone here and I just don't want them in my photo. It is very good at that. Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get like the best version. But yeah, I was super surprised, even with like kind of a complicated background or things in the foreground. I think that's where Magic Eraser hasn't been good in the past and where generative AI actually is like makes it better. It isn't just like a gimmick, but there are also gimmicks. And like, I remain unconvinced that anybody was asking for the ability to like put dinosaurs in their photos. And like, it's kind of funny for a minute. But yeah, I'm going to stay away from the dinosaurs, I think.

1:14:03Yeah, I mean, and I think it goes back to that question of who is it for, right? Because I think there's a world in which you can make the case that this stuff is fun to share with people, right? Like people who weren't there, people who care about you and your kid. And like, it's silly and fun in the way that like, I think about the pictures you get at Disney World on a roller coaster, right? Where they pick this one very specific moment and it always has a silly background. And like, no one believes that that is like a representative photo of your life. Right. But it is, it is, that to me is actually a perfect example of like, that is a photograph of a memory and not of a, it's not a photo.

1:14:40Even though in a way it is a photo, it's so exactly staged and put together and directed and surrounded with a frame that like they make a memory out of that in a way that I think is mostly cool and fine. But there is still something different about it when you're doing it on your phone and your camera roll in these like very mundane things. Yeah. Yeah. Like the taking out the background of a shot of a park to remove a building is like not the same thing as the roller coaster shot at Disney World in a way that I'm still having trouble putting my finger on. It's not the same. Yeah, no, I agree.

1:15:19I think that's a good analogy. So what what has this given you in terms of new perspective on the what is a photo debate? Like, do you do you buy Google's memories, not photos thesis a little more, even if it doesn't quite pan out in reality? I you know I don't know I don't want to give them too much credit I do in a way you know the thing that struck me is really it's such a different approach than than the iPhone 16 camera which is more about you know the new photographic styles and kind of their response to what is a photo is like, we'll give you the tools to dial in the color and the skin tones the way you see it, which is kind of, they're answering the same question.

1:16:09And it's not like, we're going to reproduce this thing the way it absolutely was. It's sort of putting it, giving you more input over like, no, it felt more like this, or it looked more, it looked warmer or cooler. adding dinosaurs to your photos is not a thing you know you can do with the iphone camera presently but it kind of struck me how they're both kind of turning from this like you know push to like represent reality as faithfully as they can and like do it with as many you know as much data as they can cram into a single image and it's sort of turning to like, no, you make the call on this, actually.

1:16:55Yeah, there's a real like theory of relativity thing happening in photography that is maybe true. Like it is, I think it has never been true that cameras perfectly captured exactly everything right in the real world. Like it's just never been true. It's just that now the tools with which you can make it more real are the same tools with which you can make it less real. And I think you can't have one without the other. If you give me the tools, I can inevitably use them in both directions. And we have to decide if we're okay with that, I think. And the magic eraser thing is really interesting because this tech is getting better shockingly fast.

1:17:32And I think it's probably going to keep getting better shockingly fast for a pretty long time. So the capabilities are not getting worse anytime soon. Yeah. All right. Before we go, give me the single worst example you had. Was there a photo that you made disastrously unusable, would never share with another soul in this project? Let's see. I tried to do a bunch of my vacations. We went to Iceland last year. And there's literally the waterfall that is in the magic eraser, like, promotional. It's called, like, Skagafoss or something. Like, I'm not pronouncing it right. But they're like, look at this beautiful waterfall.

1:18:14You can take all the people out. And all of a sudden you have the waterfall yourself. I did that. And it's like the most boring friggin photo of a waterfall. I'm like, what have I done here? Like, I'm not. No, I put I put the people back in. This is why Samsung makes the moon beautiful. So you don't have to worry about it. There's just like you want the moon. Here's the moon. Yeah, you can have it. I put the people back in is a pretty good. that's like a memoir title for you when you write about what is a photo i'm writing that down right now all right allison thank you as always thank you all right we gotta take one more break and then we're gonna come back take a question from the virgcast hotline we'll be right back

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1:21:27all of your awesome questions. So thank you to everybody who reaches out. This week, we have a question, God help me, about running. Hello, BridgeCast. This is Zach from Las Vegas. I have a few hundred dollars that I wanted to spend on a new gadget, and I've been looking at the Pixel Buds Pro 2. I have the original Pros, and I'm mostly happy with them, but when I take them running, they often aren't very secure, and I thought the Pro 2s would fix that. However, I've recently been intrigued with the Meta Ray-Ban glasses. I think they'd work well on my runs, incorporating sunglasses and speakers for music.

1:22:00Hence a new fun class of tech that I don't have. However, I'm all in on the Google ecosystem and Pixel products, and I didn't want to add a new assistant or AI to my life. If you were in my position, which would you purchase? Thank you. All right. V song is here to help me. Hi, V. Hi. I empathize so much. Right. You know why you're here for this, right? I know. Yeah. Okay. So I want to, I want to reframe this question very slightly because I think I don't want to spend a ton of time litigating the Pixel Buds Pro specifically, in part just because everybody's ears are different, right? And the only actually good advice we can give is try them.

1:22:35Buy them both, try them, see what happens. But I do think the question of can the Ray-Ban meta smart glasses be a kind of multi-purpose useful exercise thing is a question we've actually gotten a bunch of times. So I want to talk about that. And I also want to throw in, you and I have both tried and are fans of the Shox Open Runs. So I think in those three categories, you have the headphones that go in your ears, you have the bone conduction headphones, and you have smart glasses. You're literally in running gear right now about to go running. My first question is, what are you going to put in or on or near your ears when you run today?

1:23:12Today when I run, I'm going to be wearing the Shox Open Run Pro 2. I genuinely love them. there. I used to be a big Beats Fit Pro girly, and then I moved to the suburbs, and the Range Rovers here are unhinged. It's a safety thing. I really need situational awareness, so I've been wearing these, and I just love them compared to the previous versions of Aftershocks because the bass is decent. Like, if you really love bass, this ain't gonna do it for you, but compared to other bone conduction headphones the bass is quite good the sound quality for bone conduction is quite good and it's because it's using um some like regular air conduction speakers on top of the bone conduction so the bass is the air conduction and the the mids and treble are bone conduction works great really love it pretty secure it's not falling off but to to to the to the point of the question.

1:24:14It's not great if you want to wear glasses on top of it. Everyone's faces are different. Everyone's ear capacity is different. I have a pretty narrow ear to head space, I guess what you would say. So when I don't feel like wearing contacts when I'm running and I put the shocks in and I have my glasses on or my sunglasses on, it's very crowded in the ear space and that is like I think my biggest complaint of those so far so meta ray bands are fucking great if you just want to consolidate two things and like I'm I did several miles this summer um wearing the meta ray bands as as like a two-in-one it's both my sunglasses and it's my um form of audio like it's actually pretty great for that if you're running in a relatively quiet area or you're not like by like a highway.

1:25:10If you're by a highway, it's just not gonna do that for you. Yeah, in terms of like running in loud environments, it's in-ear headphones of the move. And then honestly, I would say bone conduction is second. And then like big gap, meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. Like those things, if there's a truck idling that you run by, like you're toast. You're not gonna be able to hear it. You're toast. And also, if you are someone who runs races. So I ran New York half marathon a couple of years ago with the Bose Tempo. Loved the Bose Tempo. It was great during all throughout my training. I was like, this is great.

1:25:46I'm going to do this race day because the general rule for runners is nothing new on race day. You want to have practiced everything beforehand. When they are blasting music at these races, a critical failure on my part because I have my very specific running playlist. It is highly curated. And I was like, I do not jam with these jams. And it really kind of ruined my vibe. So like in that sense, they're not great. So it really depends on where you're running. The other issue I have with the Meta Ray Vans is that they are heavier. That was my question. My only real worry in recommending these to a lot of people is just that they are large, like physically heavy sunglasses.

1:26:32glasses and I am not a consistent enough runner to weigh in on this, which is the thing I was most curious about from you. But like you've complained about how heavy they are when you're not trying to run fast and long. How do they feel in a in a real like run scenario? I would say if you're doing like 5k or less, you're really not going to nervous too much. But like the more you run, the sweatier you are, especially if it's in the summer, especially if you're wearing a hat. So like I said, I wear them a lot for my mileage during the summer. And now I'd have a little hat to protect me because the sun is deadly uh and i have the ray-bans and like i'm running in 80 plus degree weather high humidity in jersey uh my face gets sweaty sunscreen it's just like melting down my face these things and so like you know these glasses are pretty good if you have a low nose bridge like i do uh but when you have sweat and sunscreen they're gonna slip a little bit they're gonna slip a little bit that's just like inevitable because you are in an up and down running motion um if you're doing like really long mileage i want to say like if you're training for a half or you're training for a marathon uh you kind of gotta deal with the fact that they are heavier battery life like it's hard to say because you could be a freaking cheetah and a half marathon is like an hour and a half for you so like whatever it'll be fine for your long runs or you could be slow like me where you're just like you're like turtle steady does it and you're running like two and a half hour to three hour half marathons and you're just like this is this battery life it should it should work if you're fully charged but whom among us always has a fully charged headphone when we run out the door so like it is you play a little bit with fire there.

1:28:21So yeah, like, unfortunately, you're going to have to try a couple of things. So, but what it sounds like you're saying is that if you're just a person who just sort of casually runs for exercise, you just want to like get out in the morning and run a couple miles to get the blood flowing. All those concerns you just described probably don't really apply. So you should mostly be fine with the Ray-Bans, right? Yeah, you should mostly be fine so long as you don't, like you said, you're not running by highways and like a lot of construction because you ain't going to hear nothing. Like I have done that and you're not going to hear anything.

1:28:53Obviously, fit is very personal. So before you buy, I would go to a store and see how they fit on your base. But I actually really enjoyed running with them this summer, particularly when it was really sunny and I don't want to have multiple things sitting in my ear. It's actually very smart. It's a very smart option. But again, loud environments, races, you're probably not going to have a good time going, especially if it's a big race, it might not be a problem if it's a smaller race and they're not blasting like somebody else's playlist. But for me, like at a big race, when I wore the Bose Tempo, I was like, I've made a huge mistake because I had to listen to like Pitbull and Pitbull doesn't get me going for a run.

1:29:37So no one needs that for a half marathon. The thing I keep thinking about with all of this is just that we can't be that far away from like the wraparound Oakley's smart glasses. Like that is so clearly the next one of these you would do if you're meta. Everybody's into health and fitness is a wearable thing. It's exactly for the people you're describing. Like somebody is going to make those like rainbow tinted wraparound Oakley's with the croquis on the back that you can just secure to your head and it's going to be Ray-Ban meta glasses and they are going to sell so many of those. And that becomes the answer to this question because then it's like you're going to look like a doofus but it's going to rule and you're going to win all your races so congratulations that was the bose fit tempo they already did it i both just didn't manage that side of the business well but like you can see some of my pictures from that my first new york city half marathon i am wearing the bose fit tempo i look like a freaking jabroni and you know if if if they could have beaten the the pitbull and the pop music that i am not a fan of just blasting, it would have been perfect.

1:30:42As it was, I was just like, I can't hear my K-pop. I have no motivation. This is terrible. So those are all things to consider if you really want to go with the Meta Raid dance for running. All right. What's on the running playlist right now? A lot of stricke hits because as far as K-pop goes, they're not very bubblegum. They're kind of like pots and pans, crazy electronica music. And it's just like... I'm like, yeah, there's a beat. I can go to that. I hate everything right now, but I can go. I can go. A lot of times I run to K-pop because I'm not super fluent in Korean, so I can just be ignoring what they're saying.

1:31:19And it's just like, yeah, they're just saying you can do it. That's great. I love this for me. Yeah, I need a lot of bass and a lot of brah when I run. uh otherwise like i don't know how people listen to podcasts or audiobooks because i'll just stop there's nothing like so boring yeah it's so it's like i could just listen to this audiobook on a couch i don't need to be suffering while i run so yeah a lot of straight kids um shabuzi and duckworth they have the song called uh start a riot and i'm like they're like who are you here gonna start a riot and I'll run. I'll be like, me, I'm starting the riot of this hill.

1:32:02So yeah, I love that. All right. Well, I think my recommendation for this question is start with the Ray-Bans A, because they're a really fun gadget. And if you just have a few hundred dollars, you want to blow on a gadget. It's a really good one to mess with. They're super fun. You'll enjoy them. Take them on a run and a half and you will immediately know whether they work for you or not. And then you can try the other things. But I think if the Ray-Bans work for you, that feels like the most fun outcome here. So I would say start there. That is the most fun. And if those don't work, highly recommend the shocks just because like, if you look at any running influencer on TikTok right now, they all got shocks on their ear.

1:32:39They all got that exact thing. They all love it. And I'm like, yeah, I do too. I was pleasantly surprised by the latest version of the Open Run Pro. I've started using them for runs, for dog walks, for like pushing the stroller to go pick up my kid. And now it's like, you know, the thing when you get a car and all of a sudden you start seeing the car that you have everywhere. That has been my experience with these. They are everywhere. And everyone I see who is like way too good at running, those people who like, you know, if you like met them, they would talk to you about how much they like running.

1:33:09They all wear them. And I feel like it makes me hate myself and them. But it's also like clearly there's there's something here. yeah they're like literally i have been seeing every single running influencer just like upgrading to them and going like oh my god and they have the same opinions that i had so i was like oh yeah like it's it's a real thing and they're sweat they're very i i got caught in a rainy run the other day four miles of just like rain and they worked great i would be less confident that the a Ray-Bans would survive a four-mile run and like pretty decent Hurricane Helene leftover rain shower.

1:33:48So like you got to kind of like think about that as well. Fair enough. All right. Well, I hope that helps. V, thank you as always. Sure. I'm going to go suffer now and run. Godspeed. All right. All right. That is it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everyone who came on the show and thank you as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about, including Allison's great story about her memories, all of our coverage of Halide, all of our phone reviews, many, many thoughts about AI. Neil, I did a really fun thing comparing the different cameras on the different smartphones and how they use AI to do stuff.

1:34:22Lots of that on theverge.com. I'll put a lot of links in the show notes, but you know, read the website. It's a good website. And as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other cameras you think I should buy, you can always email us at vergecast at theverge.com or call the hotline 866-VERGE-11. one we really, really, really love hearing from you. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poore, and Eric Gomez. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neela and I will be back on Friday to talk about all kinds of news going on this week. There's more AI news.

1:34:52There's some interesting gadgety stuff going on. We might get some Apple stuff soon. Lots to talk about. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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