Google's Pixel 9 and the Rise of "Was That Real?" Photography

16 October 2024

Google's Pixel 9 phones, out since August, are the clearest signal yet of where smartphone photography is going: straight through the AI looking glass. Add Me lets the photographer appear in the group shot they took (the phone merges two photos seamlessly). Magic Editor can move subjects, erase passers-by, and "reimagine" backgrounds from a text prompt.

The business upside

For everyday marketing photography, this is genuinely useful. Remove the wheelie bin from your shopfront photo. Tidy the cables out of the workshop shot. Get the whole team — including the person holding the phone — into the picture. Ten minutes' phone editing now does what an hour of desktop retouching used to.

The line worth drawing

Cleaning up a photo is presentation. Fabricating one is deception — and customers, reviewers and regulators are increasingly alert to it. Our rule of thumb:

• Fine: removing distractions, fixing lighting, tidying backgrounds.
• Not fine: altering the product, inventing crowds, faking results or "before and after" shots.

Every phone maker is shipping these tools now, so the question isn't whether your business will use AI photo editing — it's whether you'll have decided your own honesty line before the tools decide it for you.