Did you know that with an iPhone you can take really terrible AI photos that could pose a danger to society? I bet many of us know that this is possible with a Pixel 9.
I’m talking about the Pixel 9’s new Pixel Studio, and by extension the “Reimagine” tool that’s part of Google’s Magic Editor software. It lets you transform a photo into something else, or even create a photo out of nothing, and it often looks very believable – even if it’s something that’s not 100% real in any universe.
Android & Chill
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Google does that. You don’t even need a Pixel 9 to use Google AI to create photos from your head, because Google’s ImageFX is here and works on any smartphone that can use Google Chrome, which is all of them.
And forget about Google for a minute. There are many other companies with mobile-friendly websites that will let you do the same thing as Pixel Studio. I found several places online that will create an image of a chicken committing a terrorist act and it only took a couple of minutes. No, I’m not telling you where to find them. You can use Google or like me Bing. They’re not hard to find.
Interesting fact: None of those places were Google, because it doesn’t create anything, chicken or anything else, that commits terrorism. Google has rules for its AI tools and the people who use them have to follow them. If you find a way to break those rules, there are places you can report it so Google can try to fix the problem.
Remember that AI is dumb, not intelligent, so things slip through the cracks. A Google spokesperson told The Verge, “Sometimes some prompts can challenge the safeguards in these tools, and we remain committed to continually improving and refining the safeguards we have in place.”
I don’t care about any of that. Shitty people with shitty agendas will find a way to make shitty pictures and they’ve been doing it for years. AI is a disaster, but it’s not a magical tool that makes these things possible; it just lets people do them without spending five minutes learning another method.
Use your common sense and never believe anything that seems unrealistic or stupid. You are not a robot, so use your brain and everything will be fine.
What bothers me, though, is the whole pearl-chasing thing that occurs whenever Google is involved. It’s fine to hate Google for the really stupid and evil things it does, and we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. But pretending Google is to blame because evil people do evil things is bad journalism.
You can use Bing or Duck Duck Go to find a website that works with your phone and does the same things Google’s Magic Editor can do. You can use a Samsung phone, a Motorola phone, or an iPhone. You can take Google out of the game completely and get exactly the same result or even worse because not every AI company has the same seemingly weak AI guardrails as Google.
When Apple releases its Image Playground in the fall, people will show pictures of pigs snorting cocaine or children locked in cages or other horrible things. What won’t happen is that tech publications will write and post endlessly about how bad Apple is for “allowing” this to happen.
The Google hate is often deserved. I am a big part of it myself and think Google is not a highly ethical or honest company. My point is not to write rage bait or get you to click by saying Google is responsible for something people have always done poorly.
