In a world where many things are fake and pretentious, Google’s new Pixel 8 and 8 Pro give you the tools you need to stand out. While your friend with an Apple iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy might be able to edit their pictures, Google’s latest phones go a step further by letting you tinker with things such as capturing a group photo that doesn’t accurately depict the actual moment. It might be impressive from a technological point of view, but it does sound a little creepy. But that’s beside the point.
Google’s claims about Pixel 8’s on-device generative AI sound very impressive
You might be wondering why ChatGPT is so expensive to run. Well, it’s because it needs a lot of computing power. On top of that, they got to pay the researchers and developers. And, of course, there’s also the data storage cost.
The machine learning algorithms also make the cameras better, letting the phones do stuff such as taking a series of photos, selecting the best shot for each subject individually, and creating a group photo (Best Take). Google says it uses on-device algorithms to achieve this.
Another AI feature is Magic Editor, which lets you resize and reposition subjects with “just a few taps.” There’s also the Audio Magic Eraser feature that removes distracting sounds such as background noise from your video.
Most of the AI magic is happening far away from your phone apparently
Google may have overstated the capabilities of the Tensor G3, according to YouTuber Mrwhosetheboss. He has noticed that every AI-based feature needs an internet connection. That’s because it seems that the Pixel 8’s chip is not powerful (or smart) enough to do all the aforementioned tasks and needs to send them to Google’s servers for completion.
In the case of Magic Editor, an image will first have to be saved to your Google account before it’s processed.
That’s not the picture Google painted and not everyone would be okay with their images getting sent to Google for processing. And even if you are willing to put up with that, Mrwhosetheboss says that the process is not as seamless as it was portrayed by Google, and erasing elements and moving stuff around takes a long time. The phones sometimes struggle to identify objects and in some cases, you get an error that Magic Editor can’t show the results you want because that might violate its terms.
Hopefully, the phones will get better with time.
