Look at this photo, it looks normal, right? Guess what, it never happened. Google has a new Ad Me feature that lets you add the photographer to a group photo using augmented reality and I had to try it out. Now I saw your comments during our Pixel Nine event live stream, many of you didn’t have this feature. Jon Sims said we were just faking photos for no reason. Fanon said yeah let’s faking the photos even more. Chris Hallow said as a photographer, “I hate you guys now.” Strong words but I understand you and initially shared some of your feelings. But let’s talk about how I felt after my experiment. I tried adding myself with my CS colleagues A Bra and Faith and I must say I wasn’t as worried after trying it out. I have more concerns about whether some of Google’s other photo editing tools allow us to go too far to get the perfect photo. But more on that later. Here’s how Ad Me works. You take two photos and they get stitched together. We wanted our last photo to look like we had a bra and my arms around each other. So she took a photo of Faith and me first. We made sure to leave room for Abra to pose in later. I held out my arm to her. Then Abra handed me the phone to take the next photo. Faith and I were able to leave the frame because augmented reality proxies of us showed where we were. I used those to position a bra to most closely look like she was in the picture. She held out her arm to me and I took the second photo. Then the phone stitched photo one and two together to create a single image with all of them. But Abra didn’t layer the images the way we imagined, which we found very weird. Uh oh, we can’t do that. We tried the arms around each other photo a few times, but Abra didn’t want to make it look like that, so we kept experimenting. I found that the Abra photos look most realistic when there’s a little space between each subject. Like here. I think it actually looks like we were all together at the same time. And yes, you can work with the same person. In this case, it’s Faith and her alter ego. Would this image convince you? She has a twin? What? Yes. After this experiment, I’m less worried about an “I,” it’s not perfect, which is reassuring. That said, we can’t fake every possible scenario. And I appreciate that. This feature allows you to include the photographer in a group photo in the spirit of inclusivity. I think an “I” could be a great way for parents who are always behind the camera to be included in those special moments with their kids, for example. But that’s not the only reason for the debate about whether it’s a good idea to create photos of moments that didn’t actually happen. Google’s Magic Editor has a new, revamped tool that lets you enter prompts to transform your photo. My colleague Andrew Langson used it to change the background of his selfie to a cool brick wall with a sunset. Magic Editor also lets you remove someone from the background of your photo. And Google has a Best Take feature that lets you compose a shot where everyone is smiling. These other features worry me a little, while Ad Me seems to be geared towards inclusivity. These other features seemed geared towards allowing you to create what could be described as a perfect photo, but isn’t part of the beauty of a really good shot that doesn’t always happen? Well, these features don’t always result in completely seamless photos if you look closely at Andrew’s redesigned image. For example, there are small details like the imperfect cutouts around his hair that give it away that it’s been edited. But some photos from Magic Editor or Best Take look pretty legit. Now don’t get me wrong. I like playing with these features, and I even like posting the photos while disclosing that they’ve just been edited. The only way to know if they’ve been edited with AI is to check the metadata on your Pixel phone, so it feels dishonest to me to post them without disclosing that they’ve been edited and just pretend that I’m constantly taking these flawless pictures. Of course, there are also bad actors who could use any of these tools in nefarious ways. Those aren’t the types of situations I’m thinking about today because they’re obviously bad. I’m addressing the gray area we encounter in everyday life, namely whether or not we should use these tools to make our Instagram feeds look perfect, but maybe my online presence is already somehow dishonest because I really only post about my best moments. These are questions I grapple with all the time, and tools like Google’s I mentioned aren’t going away. So we’ll continue to have to grapple with how comfortable we are with using them. If at all, for the next few years. This is just the beginning. A me is available on the entire Pixel 9 range. Well, thanks for watching