The Pixel 9 Pro XL showed me the future of AI photography

I played a caller benignant of AR Pac-Man crippled yesterday, guiding a ellipse connected a telephone surface toward a bid of small dots that seemed to hover astir a league room. In this version, you don’t level up erstwhile you finish; instead, you get a panoramic photo.

I got to walk a mates of hours utilizing the Pixel 9 Pro XL connected the eve of Google’s yearly hardware event. Becca got to play with the caller phones, too, and you tin cheque retired her impressions successful the video below. And portion my clip was focused connected the 9 Pro XL, it shares each of its camera features and hardware with the smaller Pixel 9 Pro. The modular Pixel 9 comes with a batch of the aforesaid capabilities — including the caller panorama mode — though not each of them.

The updated panorama interface I played with is the effect of a implicit overhaul of the Pixel camera’s panorama mode. Pixel camera PM Isaac Reynolds says his squad “literally deleted each enactment of codification and started astatine zero.” The caller panorama mode incorporates processing advancements similar Night Sight that the archetypal mode didn’t offer. And the caller UI is simply a small much delightful than the aged one, which ever gave maine anxiousness erstwhile it scolded maine for moving excessively accelerated oregon tilting the camera excessively acold off-axis.

An updated panorama mode isn’t the item of the Pixel 9’s astir noteworthy caller photograph features — it astir apt doesn’t adjacent marque the apical five. There’s the caller Add Me camera diagnostic that helps enactment the lensman into a radical changeable by blending 2 abstracted photos.

Magic Editor successful Google Photos present comes with an enactment to “reimagine” parts of your photograph with thing much than a pat of the surface and a substance prompt. You tin besides grounds 4K video, sprout it up to the cloud, and get an 8K clip backmost courtesy of AI-fueled upscaling. It each makes an updated panorama UI consciousness similar tiny potatoes.

But potatoes of each sizes matter, particularly erstwhile it’s the camera you transportation each day. Consider, for a moment, sharpening. As Reynolds explains to me, the Pixel camera’s HDR Plus processing pipeline has gone done thing of an overhaul this year. The changes halfway connected however sharpening is applied and however the camera handles edges betwixt airy and acheronian elements successful the image. This is astir evident successful faces, helium says.

I took a fistful of examination photos betwixt the Pixel 8 Pro and the 9 Pro XL connected a abbreviated excursion successful Palo Alto, and I’ll beryllium honorable — I’m having a hard clip seeing the quality successful astir of my shots, faces oregon no. I’ll bash a batch much investigating nether antithetic conditions erstwhile I get much clip with the Pixel 9, but the changes successful sharpening mightiness beryllium the benignant of happening you person to spell looking for. On the different hand, I decidedly spot a quality successful however the 2 cameras grip 30x Super Res Zoom — details are noticeably clearer successful the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s changeable above.

I besides tested retired Video Boost briefly. It’s meant to marque videos successful debased airy much appealing but was benignant of underwhelming the past clip I tried it. With this update, Video Boost works portion zooming, enhancing detail, and smoothing retired transitions. It’s besides doubly arsenic accelerated to process erstwhile it’s uploaded, an betterment Reynolds attributes to utilizing TPUs successful the unreality alternatively than CPUs.

Most importantly, the results look bully capable that I’d really privation to usage it again. Details successful the boosted video I took of that distant operation look overmuch amended than successful the archetypal footage, and the jerky transitions arsenic I switched lenses are overmuch smoother.

There are nary ghosts successful the panorama Pac-Man game, but you can spot a shade of yourself erstwhile you usage Add Me, and boy, is it weird. It uses a akin benignant of onscreen UI to usher you done taking a photo, handing disconnected the camera to idiosyncratic successful the changeable truthful you tin commercialized places, and taking different changeable by lining up the ghostly representation of radical successful the archetypal framework with the caller subject. The resulting representation blends the frames unneurotic truthful it looks similar everyone was successful the photograph astatine the aforesaid time.

Add Me is very convincing astatine archetypal glance; you lone announcement the signs of AI tinkering erstwhile you look intimately astir the edges of the taxable who’s been added to the frame. It’s casual capable to use, and asking your person to usage it is astir apt little awkward than asking a alien for a radical shot. At the precise least, it’s a thoroughly manual process that doesn’t look similar thing an evil-doer could easy manipulate to sow chaos successful an predetermination year. Probably.

I played astir with a fewer different AI features, including an car re-framing instrumentality successful Magic Editor, which suggested I re-compose an representation of a walking way to absorption connected a solitary mile marker pole. It mightiness beryllium an improvement, honestly, but for the weirdly agelong shadiness generative AI added successful the frame. And there’s Reimagine, which lets you usage substance prompts to regenerate elements of an representation utilizing gen AI. I privation to usage it a batch much connected my ain photos earlier I gully immoderate coagulated conclusions, but for amended oregon worse, it seems highly susceptible — a existent what-is-a-photo-pocalypse waiting to happen.

That’s the comic happening — the Pixel camera is simply a almighty instrumentality whose makers instrumentality bonzer attraction implicit however sharply it renders foliage and however casual it is to sprout a panorama. And sitting close adjacent to that camera pipeline is simply a full caller acceptable of AI tools designed to assistance you recompose, upscale, oregon punctual your mode to an perfect representation — not the 1 you took, but the 1 you imagined.

Reynolds isn’t bothered by this reality. Most of the generative AI features connected the Pixel 9 Pro are editing features successful Google Photos, and adjacent arsenic the exertion down them bleeds into the camera app, helium thinks offering the close controls matters much than anything. “Whether it’s successful camera oregon successful Photos, either way, you get to marque the decision.” More than the placement of the feature, however it behaves for the idiosyncratic is the important thing. “Whether it’s sticky oregon not matters... whether it’s reversible, I think, matters much than whether it’s successful camera oregon successful Photos. So I don’t spot an tremendous quality betwixt the two.”

I’m not definite however acceptable I americium to reimagine the entity successful my photo. But arsenic the images we instrumentality and the images we spot online progressively thin connected AI successful immoderate way, it’s going to get a small messy — and there’s nary arcade-inspired interface to assistance america link the dots.