The Pixel 9’s “Add Me” feature is typical Google. More of it, please
The Google Pixel 9 is now available for pre-order, and the company has invested time and money into telling us why we should buy one. The internet will debate its value for a while, because that’s what the internet does, but the phones seem like a good upgrade for anyone who wants or needs something new.
As expected, the hardware isn’t the selling point. Yes, the new processor has an NPU with a higher processing speed than anything else, and that shouldn’t matter to you in the slightest. Yes, the Pixel 9 series promises better battery life, but you probably won’t really notice that. In general, it’s a little better than the Pixel 8’s hardware.
What “stole the show,” of course, were the AI features. One in particular caught my eye: Add Me. It’s a great example of something people can see and understand, and something Google does very well. Most people won’t buy a Pixel phone, but for many who do, the camera and its features are the reason.
I have no idea how many people have wanted something like Add Me. To be honest, I would probably never use it after trying it out to see how it works. But I do know that AI should be really good at something like this, that it should work really well, and that it will get people talking about Google’s new phones.
What it is and how it works
Add Me is not a new idea; it is a much easier way to do something people have been doing for years. Simply put, it’s a way to paste one photo into another photo and blend everything together seamlessly so it looks like one unaltered photo. You follow a few simple steps and the Pixel 9 does the rest, so you don’t have to learn it yourself.
You can always do it, and you don’t even need expensive software like Photoshop. Open a photo in a free editor like Paint.Net, add a layer, insert a second image, and remove what you don’t want to be in the photos. If you’re good at it, the result when saved will look like a real photo of your dog on the moon, you standing next to someone else, or weird weather, even if it’s raining grumpy old BitMojis. idea is simple, but the execution is not, and this is where the Pixel 9 comes in.
AI is good at things like edge detection. Give the camera the data it needs about the space around your photo, take a photo of subject one, then subject two, and then let the AI determine what should and shouldn’t be there. There are no weird seven-fingered hands or AI tricks involved, because it’s two real photos stitched together into one.
I’m sure a lot of work went into this feature, but it’s pretty simple compared to some of the complex (and less understandable) things companies do with AI. The genius was to think about how you could make it a camera feature and refine it so that it works well most of the time.
Google knows AI. Every product the company offers uses it in some form, and most of them relied on AI long before it became the buzzword it is in the tech world today. Google, like its competitors, has failed on many occasions when it comes to using AI. The company knows what it can and can’t do, and recently it has shown that it knows how to present something it thinks is easy and fun to people like us who buy products.
I don’t know how popular this feature will be; even Google isn’t sure. But I do know that it was presented in a way that made people curious enough to talk about it on social media. As expected, almost no one has tried it, but half say it’s great, half say it’s not, and it will be groundbreaking when this other company does it so people can argue about who did it first.
I can only recommend you try it out.
What about misinformation?
When you have built-in tools that make image editing easy, you need to talk about how they can be abused, and Add Me is no different.
To make it work, you need to take photos of real people in real places yourself. You scan the area with the Pixel 9’s camera, take a photo of your friend (or your dog, or a houseboat, or whatever) standing on one side of the scene, then switch places and they take a photo of you on the other side.
Someone will get around these restrictions and find a way to insert someone or something into an existing photo. People always find ways to do stupid and dishonest things.
People who want to do something like this can already do it as described above. Being able to do it on a phone while ranting on social media only makes it easier.
Hopefully sites like Facebook and Instagram will label add-me photos as created with AI to prevent potential abuse, but people will still find ways to spread them. Use your common sense and trust your instincts and you’ll be fine.
Is Add Me enough to make you buy a Pixel 9? I don’t think so. It’s another one of those neat features that Google does so well, and with the right messaging, it expands the list of reasons you’d want one. We’ll have to wait and see if people are using Add Me in a year.
The new flagship in the city
The Pixel 9 Pro is Google’s latest and greatest device, featuring a new design, improved camera sensors, and a new Tensor G4 chip that can handle complicated AI tasks to make your life easier. The phone comes with a variety of fun imaging features that users will love, like Add Me, Reimagine, and more.
