What Is a Photo?
It’s also notable what isn’t present on the iPhone this year: there’s no generative AI wackiness at all. There’s no video boost or face-swapping, no adding yourself to group photos, no drawing to add stuff with AI like on the Pixel or Galaxy phones — really, none of it. I asked Apple’s VP of camera software engineering Jon McCormack about Google’s view that the Pixel camera now captures “memories” instead of photos, and he told me that Apple has a strong point of view about what a photograph is — that it’s something that actually happened. It was a long and thoughtful answer, so I’m just going to print the whole thing[…]
John Gruber has quoted the relevant section, and it’s getting rave reviews. Maybe I’m just too dumb to see the profundity, but I don’t think there’s any there there. These are pleasant sounding words along the lines of “music is in our DNA,” but what is the connection to what the Camera app actually does? Reports are that the photos by default look more processed than before. And Apple, like Samsung and Google, has been including features for years that make the photos not what actually happened.
“Something that really, actually happened” is a great baseline compared to Samsung’s nihilistic definition (nothing is real) and Google’s relativistic one (everyone has their own memories). […] But I have to wonder how malleable that definition will retroactively become to make room for Clean Up and future generative features of Apple Intelligence.
What McCormack said is that a photo is a “celebration of something that really, actually happened,” not that the image in the photo actually happened.
Google lets you celebrate a moment where two people were actually standing next to each other by creating such an image from two separate captures where they were standing alone. Apple lets you take a photo of multiple people and objects and remove some of them. What is the distinction here that amounts to a strong point of view? It just seems like a difference in degree. Arguably, the Google example is more truthful in that it’s helping you recreate an actual moment, whereas the Apple one is letting you tune it up to be more what you remembered or wished for than the reality.
If we were talking about this last year, people would say that there’s a big philosophical difference because—although they both combine multiple exposures, add fake bokeh, and use AI to adjust colors and focus, etc.—Android phones let you remove objects and iPhones don’t. But now Apple is adding that, too. If there’s a bright line distinction, I think that was it. Apple crossed it, and I don’t think they’ll stop there. This is fine. It’s a popular feature, and I know people who were considering switching to Android because of it.
In my testing of Clean Up on an image on the latest iOS 18.1 beta build, Apple adds EXIF tags to the image to mark it as being edited with generative A.I. tools. EXIF tags can be erased, though, and I do not see any other indicators.
Previously:
- iPhone 16 Pro Camera
- Halide 2.15: Process Zero
- Apple Intelligence Announced
- Computational Bridal Photo
- The Limits of Computational Photography
- iPhone Camera Over Processing
- iPhone Cameras and Computational Photography
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I'd like to think that a photograph is an accurate depiction of reality, warts & all. Not something prettified by algorithms in any way, in order to make it 'better' for instant consumption on social media.
Programmers should not decide how reality should look, but the results are shown in every smartphone image comparison video on YouTube. Same reality, but shown simultaneously via different phone cameras. The result are shocking, IMHO. I don't want my recollection of the actual reality enhanced, sharpened, filtered, upgraded, or whatnot.
And shooting RAW won't save you: Pro RAW and ExpertRAW are all AI processed before being saved, you can watch it happening before your eyes.
Process Zero to the rescue!
Has Apple walked back the amount of post-processing they do on the iPhone? Last I remember anyone talking about it, and the images I saw, what iPhones were generating wouldn't come remotely close to a reasonable definition of a "photograph".
"Photo-referenced Computer-generated imagery" would be a better description.
Fake depth of field, fake lihting effects, munging together multiple exposures to create a single "idealised" image, these are all just as fake as Samsung replacing the moon in their camera photos with a file image.
As for the a justification that it's making an image "as you remember it"; the mere act of being exposed to the fake image will rewrite your memory of the event to conform to the image you see. That's how memory works. That's why this stuff is so insideous.
