AI is fixing — and ruining – our photos
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Walk into the verdict, the flag shop podcast of knowing that the key to the camera control on the iphone sixteen is that IT does whatever it's going to do when you let go of the button, not when you press the button. Total game change, I mean, for David peers, and I am doing what I guess you would call a camera audit. So i've decided for one reasons that I want to take fewer photos and videos on my phone, especially of like life memories.

I think if you're doing IT for a purpose, it's fine, but I just want to have these photos and not take them in a way that sort of ruins the memory of the moment that make sense. And I have definitely have been guilty of taking on my phone, taking a picture and then being like, oh, well, i'm here. Let me check my fantasy team for forty five minutes and that's bad.

So i'm trying to get out of that. And i've discovered I actually have a lot of options around here. I have old phones, and really any phones from the last couple of years.

I have old pixel, all the iphones. I have a nothing phone like. There's a bunch of decent camera options here.

Maybe I should use one of those. I have A D, J. I ozma pocket. This thing takes great videos.

I do a lot of verdict stuff with IT, actually, and I like IT quite a bit. I have an old SONY alpha six thousand line around here somewhere. I have a lot of options.

And I was thinking, I need to buy a new camera, some fancy new, you know, the fog x one hundred eight or whatever. And I probably will, let's be honest, this is just the life of chosen. I spend all of the money on gadgets that I don't have.

But I think there's something interesting about repurposing. One of these catch, I mean, I have the humane A I pen and the rabbit or one here, both. Those are cameras.

Maybe there's something to thinking about the camera I have with me in a slightly different way. Maybe it's another phone. Maybe it's no camera.

May be I should go just like bunch disposables. I have a friend who does that. And IT seems sort of delightful. Anyway, all we are here to talk about on the show today, almost all we're here to talk about is photos. We've been talking about this idea of what is a photo for years now as smart phone cameras, i've got more and more A I based.

And the whole idea of what happens when you hit the shutter button on your camera or on your phone or wherever has shifted the question of what you get out of IT IT feels harder to know whenever and it's a thing. We've talked about a lot on this show. And so for today's episode, words are gonna dig weight into that.

For the whole show, we're going to talk to the folks behind the super popular, super cool camera APP holed baby. Hey, light. We're actually going to sort that out when we get them on here to talk through how they think about photos and why their new feature called process zero, which just removes all of apples processing from the iphone, has been such a hit.

The photos are worse. People really like IT. It's really fast. And so we can talk to them about all that stuff.

And then alison Johnson on our team has been doing kind of an A I photo experiment on herself to see how IT changes the photos you take, the way that you take them, the way you edit them, the way that you remember them when you know that you can change just about anything about them after the fact. Then we have a hot line question that has nothing to do with the photos, but is still very fun. All that is coming up in just a second.

But first I just realized that if i'm going to to charge this SONY camera, I have to get a micro U S, B cable. And that means I have to go into the dreaded bucket of cables to see if I still have a make a USB table. The good news is i'm who I am, so i'm sure that I do.

The bad news is, ah, that bucket of cables is a deep ly terrifying place. Wish me luck. This is the verge guests. We will get back.

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Now is the platform that puts A I to work for people across your business, removing friction and in frustration for your employees, super charging productivity for your developers, providing intelligent tools for your services to make customers happier. All that is built into a single platform that you can use right now. That is why the world works with service.

Now is IT sure is now that come flash A I for people to learn more. Welcome back. So good news.

I found a micro U S B table, actually like twelve micro U S B cables. So if you ever need a micros sb table, get at me. I apparently have lots of actress for some reason, and will never, ever get rid of them.

Anyway, let's get into IT. So this APP highlight or he light again, we're going to figure that out. The minute has been around for a bunch of years, and he has gone through a lot of changes as the iphone has gone through a lot of changes. Not only, you know, the tech getting Better and the things about the design changing in the lengths is moving around, but the whole idea of what the iphone camera is supposed to do and be feels like IT has changed and the two guys band vash y.

And then send oski. And i'm cofounder lucks optics and i'm the developed half that works on hay, light and K O. And our other fun side projects i'm .

seasoned with and the design half of that. So the co, co founder and designer slush photographer of IT have been .

going through all of this and trying to figure out not only how to make a really great camera APP, but what kind of camera people need now given what the iphone and other smart phones are becoming, we are really fun conversation. new. I grab ed, ben and season hash all this out for a long time, excelling. Alright, new cells also here. Honey, I think we .

should just get them to pronounce you.

You just did the thing .

that I wanted to do first, which is, is IT. How later is I? Can we? Can we solve this for people in the world right now? You just said, hey, light then, is this the official correct answers?

I alternate because it's based on halligan, right? God and silver helios lions is lunch is not holiday, which is a middle of name.

That's what this is now. Oh yeah, sorry, there was, there was actually someone who worked at the verge of the job. Porter, I think he has moved on now, but he he wants pronounced on the pocket holiday. And we sent him a happy holidays Christmas card, and we will never let him live down. We continue to do this every year.

So good.

That's very good. Hey, light or how? Like, depending on how how fancy feel?

No, no, you guys is the worst. We have to pick one. Let's do this right now. Here on the verge cast, can we name .

your APP please? What is your name on? Three, one, two? Highlight OK. We get good. I just want to point out that like when we release.

I wants to point out that you super cheated .

and substance I I can on on two, you never go on to.

We're a very good team actually. When IT comes down to IT.

I just want to close this discourse on names that we were like were building kino. No one can mess up that name. And then IT was featured in the keynote from apple and they told us we're having trouble because that sounds a lot like keynote. And so I think every time we build a new APP, IT just needs to chAllenge someone.

The best part was that I was like, is actually pronounce cano and then they were like, really and I was like, no happy .

kind of everybody that's now ah okay. So I think we have to talk about IT. We should just we've been getting into our feelings on this podcast about what a photo is for years now, and we have invited youtube to essentially do the same thing with us. But my first question as we get in to this, and I want to talk about process zero and a lot about what has changed with iphone photography, in particular, all this. But I am desperately curious like when when you get started building a camera APP many years ago at this point, did you know at the time how bigger like philosophical exercise IT was to build a camera APP? I think we think about IT is like you you add a bunch of filters and buttons, but it's really like you are making decisions about the universe when you build a camera APP in a way that I think people are only coming around you do you know this all those years ago when you started working on on hello?

So I guess like the origin story, I think like the first the first code commit for hell. I was twenty fourteen for .

about like .

one I don't I to switch .

three times over god of so .

for holiday in twenty fourteen, IT was like three lines of code and then put away until like twenty sixteen. And so i'd say that in twenty sixteen none of this computational photography was happening. IT was to put IT simply a lot of these apps for just rappers around the the day P.

S. That apple gave you. And I was just more pretty than here. And so we were doing at the time was and then I kind of the bastion twenty sixteen like we were adding value like focus peking so that you could actually tell what was in focus. You could dial and manual values but for the most part um until apple released raw up there about IT IT was that you had no real say on how to find image would look.

And what is interesting is I think when I came out so hel lights is now seven years old IT IT came out in twenty seventeen. That's exactly when the iphone ten launched that year. And with the iphone ten, I think apple started using the word smart HDR for the first time. And the kind of they start using that very famous slide to take one photo, and the kind of union sliced into like twelve of them and to try to show you, look, look, we look, we do a lot of stuff and there's a lot of smart things happening here. And I think that was, you know, around the same bit.

Big will started, you know, talking the pixel team started talking about, like the italian renaissance, how we can use science influence things that IT was a very early time, what you trying to figure out, like how do we get Better images out of these tiny sensors? And that was when everything exploded with like night mode and all those kind of things, IT basically turned photography from just taking a snap to like, a data science. And I was like, okay, no way.

If we actually just use these processors and like the crazy amount of computation on IT, we can fundamentally alter the output and we can just we can beat physics. We can just cheat IT like we can do exist the field. We can only things that big cameras came because of giant lens and giant sensors.

We can shot night and we can totally take photos with like boche. It's not real, but nobody cares because you're still taking a photo at night. You're still taking a photo what looks like a shot dep to field. And so we were kind of emerging at the same time as that all emerging.

So and how much control over that stuff do you get like you look at that in those early days is like, oh my god, look at this incredible tool kit. We suddenly have to play with all of the the light that the thing is capturing instead of just doing like a thing at the end of the pipeline. Or is IT like, oh, this is barely photography anymore. Uh, what what how do we deal with? Like how do you look at that when those tools are to come available?

I'd say like around twenty twenty is when things started to converge of where things we're getting a lot smarter. Also, we had like this existent, but of why should our APP exist when the first party camaras getting so much Better?

Unfortunately, both season I ready shooting of photography, which in a natural means that you're capturing the sensor data as a file and then you can bring you into a third party up like light room, and you can make different decisions on how you want to process to find image. And so around twenty, twenty is like, we are certain, see, like, wait a minute. Like what apples doing is great.

You tap of button and anyone can get a good photo, like my parents, who don't know anything about photography, tap a button and they got a photo of their grandchild, right? But if you looked at the underlying sensor, apples kind of underselling like how much Better the hardware getting. And then over time, the sensors are getting bigger, Better, the optics, we're getting Better. And so that we started being like, wait a minute, like how can we build a feature around this work stands on a zone.

One of the questions I have about raw is what IT has come to signify.

What is a raw photo?

Not quite that um but people like I don't like my iphone fifteen camera or I don't like my iphone fourteen camera and then you see in the comments and social media people say so you should shoot raw in my action is like that is that a horrible suggestion? But all that really because you're going to get this giant file and you actually have to process IT to a look.

But what IT really means is, oh, there's a way to turn off this processing where even inside of apples like pro system, you're gna generate a file that lets you turn off this ultra HDR look. And that just means something to people in the fact that the word is raw, I think, is deeply fascinating, like the word and what that means and what you get, or all kind of wrapped up in a mess. But you guys are describing like we're going na take the sensor data and start making different kinds of images .

with A I think we take an effort to saying native RAV vers pro because what apple calls raw in proa is not technically raw. And if you read the comments on a photography website like Peter pix soul, i'm sorry, but will be just constantly that guy being like, you know, it's not really wrong and like, yeah cool. Many difference .

for .

people who who aren't is deep in the weeds as we are what what is apple version? Pra.

what is your definition native? So technically raw is you have these sensors that have voltage values from light converted to, you know, these numbers, right? And then that's IT. And then you need to run and algorithms take on the sensor.

There's there's a bay filter which are discrete red, Green and blue values so that needs to kind of mushroom up in a blender and it's all like it's like basically like if you were to buy the ingredients of making a cake um and then the JPEG is the final cake. Well, um I guess pro is kind like a half big cake like like you get to pick the frosting if if you like sprinkles, whatever raisons I hate you. But pro is apple solution to what you're just talking about, where I felt like I needed a PHD uh, in image processing to take one of these native laws and make them approximate anything that apple has.

And that's partly because apple, when they take a photo, they're actually taking a burst of nine photos and then emerging them together. So the concept of having any of these bar underlying values doesn't exist anymore because it's all gonna be squash together to create smart H D R, to reduce noise and do all these effects. I really wish apple lam, said pera, because it's it's going to haunt me for the rest of my life explaining this to people. But it's like kind of halfway between the native raw in the final j pig.

And I think what is a really important thing to say there because I see a lot of people saying something like, oh, like this is just the same. But like if you just take a raw photo, that that in itself is a really fascinating turn a phrase, because if you say a raw photo, a raw file technically is not a photo yet. So what what bin said, you know, it's like you ve got this sensor data, red, Green, two, Green, two to won.

Blue, one red, some pixel biscuit to makeup the pixel all the day needs to be combined. You can think of that is kind of a giant spread sheet is just like has all these values of what the sense were caught in that moment in time from one photo, one big important one photo. And that's not a picture like you have to process a native profile to get the photo out of IT.

So per definition, a profile has to be processed for IT to be displayed on a screen and actually has too much information to even be displayed on. And so a pro profile is is essentially already has had done that step. IT has created an image because a lot of the processing that happens on iphone images requires IT to be common RGB image at bitmap essentially.

And this is a very deep image with separate information for a stuff like, but the I mention like the tone mapping, which you know of the tone control for for iphone sixteen that separately stored in the profile game table. So you can now adjust just how much that H R. effective.

You can adjust White bounced completely. You can just a sharpening. Noise reduction is something that has baked in persae and not just because apple things, just noise shouldn't exist, like notably in the rafales have a lot of noise because you've tiny have a lot of noise. But if you combine images, you can think of that if you're perfectly combine the same image, noise is different for every frame so you're gona average out the noise. And no matter what you do.

if you're combine images behind the scenes, like when we're talking about raws, we've been trying to call them digital negatives um which I don't know that any Better for casual users but is the same conceptive when you have film photography, you would have a negative but then a lot of the work of great photographers would be during the development uh um where you take the negative and president on paper, you would dodge and burn IT to recover the dynamic range which is now an algorithm that apple us for you. But like there's really cool videos of like ancel atoms with some of his majestic landscapes he's kind of doing like analog photoshopping wears like okay, I ve got to bring back from the sky values and bumped this part of so this isn't particularly new, but apple gives you like, okay, you wanted on a rough or somewhere between that's all you can have any color as long as is black, right?

Yeah well, I was just kind of say, it's just fancy to me that a lot of people say I see all the processing that's happening and maybe sometimes don't even have a word for IT like that's kind like what you are living to.

You lize like people just like taking photos and and then they take photo with this new that's like prefer IT, even though lacks this absolute like, I mean, literally the best teams in the world right now and in photography are working at google, are working at samsung, are working at we, at apple. Like to make this processing to do all this processing engineering. And they worked from the silicon up to do like insane innovations.

And then people feel like, haha, I went up and skip all that and get what off sometimes is an objectively worse image. We were objectives judge image quality. But um if we find that people yeah people just seem to have a current preference for authenticity through perfection, I think and that is really interesting.

I just keep coming back to this a that like and we've talked to bunch with this on the show that there is this increasingly pervasive feeling among people that their iphone camera in particular is bad uh and and I think like to your point, the on any objective measure of quality IT IT gets Better and Better and Better and yet people seem to like IT less and less.

At the end, and I like that disconnect is so fascinating to me because and that goes back to what you're saying about like the the iphone has decided that noise is bad period, right? Like IT noise socks, shadow sock, they should not be allowed and we will get rid of them at all costs. And I think like to your point about imperfections, that I think that's right.

And I think everybody has sort of ideas about what older photos look like. And there is a thing where, like photos can be too good. But I also think as the hardware has gotten Better, the software has gotten vastly more opinion about how a photo is supposed to look in a way that just feel sort of in congress right then and like maybe it's happening now is we're getting some of that choice backward.

It's like all the hard is really good. You can do a bunch stuff with IT. Here are some options and IT seems like maybe that's what U. S. Have you been seen as developers as some of those schools are becoming available to to make available to other people? And that actually that's what people want now is some some choice back with all this great hardware instead of just wild new ideas about shadows.

So actually, can I just, uh, dial back? I just said that process zero is reprinted raw and I can already see a thousand comments on Peter pixels. And I thank you for .

pointing out to .

the yeah yeah, I think that no, but that's between me, my therapist. Now the thing what the value at here is that we do have opinions about know there's a million different ways that we could develop the raw. And what I think with process zeros, we decided we like noise.

I A friend who works in visual effects and he calls noise analog deifingers ing. And you can't remove noise without removing these details because that's what the was captured at the time. We have opinions on sharpening.

Our images are a little softer by design. And if you look at, you know, you look at analog total phy. Actually last some before we really went all in on this.

I was shooting with a can in ae one on thirty five millimetre film. And I was like, uh, I just feels so warm, like it's it's so flawed. But I love at the fact that you can't get this crazy H H D R.

In there. And I think the chAllenge is gonna be as we're building up more features and we start adding the ability like in the future, if we want to recover dynamic range, okay. At what point do we allow users to make fake looking images, right? And it's something will have to face in the future.

That's a big question. And at what point does something become fake looking is like back to big philosopher, especial questions about photos. Where to draw that line is super messy.

I think what I think things that you are judging on the world too, is like at some point, these cameras all started looking a very similar, right? So you get your photo out of samsu fond of the pixel of the iphone. They all look like they boost the shadows way up.

And there, there could not be any reduction or clipping of dynamic range that is just considered data loss. We cannot have any noise. We've all agreed on.

And I think that's simply a result of making a camera for the greatest common denominator like this is the camera to work for everyone that they at some point someone has mentioned ing like, well, I use my camera for like reading like a searle number on the bottom of like a car or something right? Like at that point, like if you don't if you get an artistic photo that this has like really nice cherish rendering, that's really cool for you. But like this camera litter doesn't work from anymore.

And so that's a really, really difficult sites to be in. I often tell people like why I would on the one side, it's a faster and job to design the camera at apple. But at the same time, I have to make camera that works for my one and a alf year old daughter and like my eighty role father and myself, like, who is like an incredible python tic, annoying photographer, that the poetical comments section, maybe it's simply the time that like cameras do allow, and this is what obscure or to do, allow people to, like, find their own style and shooting a different way.

And you see that now with like the very unapplied thing of like adding so much control to like what kind of like final output you get in your image. And maybe that goes down to processing too. Because processing, I think people are becoming aware of how many creative decisions are being made for you.

And that's fascinating to me because there is one time, like in twenty twenty a year of unprecedented times, if I want to like pull the anode where people ran into this because they're taking photos with their samsung or pixel or uh, iphone and they woke up in time, ms. School one day, and the entire city was orange, like completely orange, because there was a huge welfare near the place where I live now. And the sun was being filled through IT and I was all orange and people to go photo with IT.

And the crazy thing happened. The camera recognized IT as being like, oh, the White baLance is way off. We're going to correct for that.

This doesn't really happen because it's trained on everything that happened before. IT and IT has this literally all that smart stuff is based on precedent. And we were in twenty and twenty living in unprecedented times. And so people started downadup like a camera, APP like hours to, you know, like, try to correct that, that manual White baLance.

And that, I think, was the beginning to be the turning point around when people started like expLoring options like that and being aware of something like that existing, like they were aware that as they took a photo like, oh, IT, it's doing something for me and I don't like that. It's doing that. And that has become a greater awareness even then like jensie, even in people who don't know what a file is, they know that processing is a thing and that that increasingly is making decisions for them. Um to go a lot ranth.

One question I have and I talk to you about this ever slides, apple designs the cameras, a system same as a system. Google is a system. You've got the hardware, the lens, and then you've got a processing pipeline to you on.

And they obviously know exactly what's going to happen in the processing pipeline. In the case of apple, their designing their own ship is part of that processing pipeline. And IT feels like they can make decisions about what they can handle in processing at the expensive of what the hard work can do.

And if you are, are making an APP that just pulls the raw data off the sensor, the apple gets to say, well, we know there's gona be some fringing. We know there is going to be some distortion in this lens, but optimize IT to collect all the light we can because our pipeline can fix almost anything except not having the light. Is that come up for you now in these in the newer versions of the phone where you can see that optimization starting to shift against like quality at the ends for a Better term in favor of just like collection?

Yeah um that was actually one of the crazy st things I saw when we started shooting a lot of native rock and cause for a while is just like promazine like just shooting a pro all the time and then I was like OK, let's go back to native office. I can I noticed that the output wishes getting a little was just getting a little worse.

Like if I would objectively look at IT, I just take us this again to clarify the difference in para and and native laws. You get a sensor data, which you just quickly throw in lighting to develop IT. I during processes that sensor data spits IT out, there's actually some corrections.

Are they baked into that? So some of the pipeline does real data on the apple iphone and some of IT. Then he starts converting its images that can start merging due ometraco ometraco actions, those kind of things.

For instance, your ultra camera will have a lot of corrections because otherwise this looks like a crazy fish island basically right um and then yeah we noticed that a few years ago, like the main camera especially, which is the one that beats together the most light you know the Cameron people use for nine nine percent of time. IT has more color fringing ing than IT has in the past. And think we talk about us in person briefly.

Neely, I was like, no, like the crazy thing that's happening here is that there's a realization there they are like, oh, way, IT might be color fingering, but we can just fix that in the pipeline. If we get more light in, we can just correct that out. And the the smart struggle makeup for what would traditionally be considered a bad, the worst hotoke phoc lens, right? But just IT just becomes a data problem essentially um and that is coming up a little bit and I wrote a little bit I just publish a review the iphone sixteen yesterday and I wrote like, look, you're GTA get used of processing because gadgets in her phones I can see him going in one direction.

I feel like you're that the pixel old kind of guy but like if you're gonna get devices that are thinner and folding and sometimes they found three ways now in china, hear the devices are folding three ways that it's going it's going that way. We're not going to off for thicker phones and bigger cameras. And to make cameras work that are smaller and thinner and toner and fit into like very small headsets and riband glasses, we're gonna need more processing because the sensors, the images aren't gonna get any Better.

That's just physics. So I fully believe that you know as we go toward slimmer and multiple iphones or whatever the are output on something like a process zero image is probably gonna get objectively worse. Um that's just the way IT is, but old fashion photography in that way. That's just I don't know how long that's going to be around on these kind of devices as they get smarter and smarter because they'll just start relying more on the fact that their magic hyper powerful computers, and they're not going to rely on the fact that they're good at collecting light because they're just not wait.

So let me ask you about that. Let me send you all the way down the exceptio ravitch. This is relive. Welcome to the place. okay.

Um at the end of this.

right you you the hardware is just there to collect light and everything else happens in the processing stack. Everything else is an average of values from the past, right? Is that do you see that all at the end that you just spin the dial all the way on the path that we're on? And we really care if the sensor is any good or the lens is any good, as long as we can collect as much massive light as possible.

So I think that's a great philosophical rescue. If you come down to IT everything, you can solve IT the way the samsung moon photo situation happens. Most of the world is completely been captured before and done before.

If you trained a good enough model with a bad enough sensor, you can probably take photos of ninety nine point nine, five percent of the things out there, and y'll be really good. So like, I don't know, that seems kind of like a reality that we're heading towards, where the processing is just simply good enough in the reality. Doesn't the reality of capture images? This needs to correspond to, like, what the internal logic can, can can cohered together and personally, philosophically find that a really big problem.

I want to make a camera that um like if you go to the and the water is a photo thing I was talking to them about this was like we should ably think about what we considered to be a photo and to me, IT is an image that generated largely majority, at least by photons that you have captured at a moment, space and time. But i'm not sure if that is going to be the case. I think in the future, some cameras, maybe not all of them, but some cameras, are going to increasingly rely on data sets of what the world should look like and what image should look like, and just use data, use lighters, data, not as like visual aid as much.

What is how light for all the way at the end of that road? Like what's what's your job when we get all the way to the end of that?

I mean, like the invention of the automobile didn't put in into horses. It's just horses were allowed to be this fun thing yet a look at them and writing and stuff rate. But as far as utility for everyday, you know people stopped keeping barns, I guess and I mean, like, look, uh, yeah photography didn't. And painting a painting. The reason people look at painting is because the amount of skill and Chrisman ship that goes into IT and being able to work within these constraints.

And then IT was really high opening last summer, a shooting analogue, because there is just something about an analog photo and actually the removal of details, right? And so I don't know if anyone tried to watch one of these high frame rate movies, like the habit at forty eight frames per second, or or that H D R A, uh, will Smith movie, the one with this clone who was a called, uh, germ nine man and every go. And because ultra high frame rate H G R and what ends up happening with movies is when you shoot hyper rame rate ultra ism, IT breaks the magic because your mind is unable to fill in the details.

So and IT turns out twenty four frames for second with a slow shutter like IT feels more dream like, and you're able to suspend disbelief for. And so with photography, there's just something about a photo that is less perfect um that that feels magical about IT. So I think there's always going to be that as an art form and um but as far something that you're going to just tap a button and get a nice photo, you I think that we are smart enough that we're never going to enter that kind of battle with the world's most are you able company?

I just put your .

definition in the test photo you collected at a moment, space and time. By that, that's a pretty definition up. Does that count if you're taking nine photos, emerging them that that moment has extended to nine captures, right?

yeah. So I think so that the thing is like, let's say and the same thing goes for cleaning up like, let's say, use AI cleaning up to erie, a part of the photo. I still think it's a photo once you fill that in with the majority of the clean ut feature. So like fifty percent or more of the pixel will become filled in by a model. I feel like IT IT ceases to be a photo in in a meaningful way because IT has now been filled in by a data set.

The are making a to IT sound very much who are focused on the creative, artistic aspects of photography. There's a whole other conversation about can we trust these images that exists in the world? Have you looked at the various water marking features from c two P.

A. That said, actually this happened. right? This photo of Donald mp. IT occurred. We're going to market. We're going to send IT to getting getting is going to know this is this photos were marked at the camera level when they went to to get have you looked to doing that? Is that something you allowed to do?

And I was that's all bullshit. And I like to wear like, if not like right now. Okay, good you a lot to so um alright, everything that the dobe is pushing as far as like content authenticity is it's just it's like device s and anti DVD and a stuff in the two thousands.

It's a like if you look at IT, the ability to just strip the meda data, the fact that you can just point your camera at a screen and take a photo like it's not going to do anything other than convince people to sign up for creative cloud and use adobe products. I don't know. I know how much deeper you want to get that, but I don't think it's useful useful time, although they do have a verification future where I think IT does like a signature of like you can I think kinds like same detection, like it'll get a signal of photo.

You can drag drop to you, I and whoever first post IT like it'll tell you who did that. That's pretty cool. But the rest of the stuff just a waste of time.

I'm just curious, this is right next to the creative part of how much can I change the sr, how much data processing can I do? Is the how much can I trust this? And IT feels like both of those are unsolved. Yeah.

when we launch process zero, like I thought I was talking about those, like can we use the fact that we shoot a jay peg that is the process zero component? And like the RAV, the the sensor, again, sensor, single shot, raw bar data as sort of a proof provenance, like a proof like that.

There are not a lot of data sets of general eye, if any, I ve and found any, at least that work on rafales, right? But conceivably you could totally do IT, that's the thing. So it's not a good you know to be a fig leaf of authenticity IT would be like, look, there is a rough you can see that that was actually taken. But you know like it's still it's just as such a losing battle at some point you philosophically as a as a photographer or camera at make or both or uh a team member of um photographed on sections, you just go through the same existence al crisis and you just realize, okay, there's nothing stopping this. And can I just .

back up what you're saying about leg editing photos? And where's the line that you're going to draw? So in twenty sixteen, there is a famous national geographic photographer, a Steve maker, y and so he got in a hot water because people noticed one of his award winning photos was actually different on this website, because there's like a dude in the background who wasn't in the final word, winning photo.

And people started digging into, and like, basically he would use what is I S teens object removal feature before IT existed. He did that equivalent kind of editing and this was a huge like you don't do that if you're actually taking photos. So and I guess this is also a question for you as journalists, like when you at what point when you're doing like an interview or you're transcribing your polling quotes, at what point is that okay to remove the likes and the buts? You'll be doing a lot of that with me and thank you.

But at what point are you then editorializing what you're trying to capture and telling a story that actually didn't occur? And effectively, everyone has to have that level of journalistic contiguity if they want to call out a photo. So David.

our broken and answer on three and want to see if we have the same OK. Um I actually I will a David answer my quick version of that is that's norms. That's professional norms.

That's what you're describing, right? This got a professional photography. Enter the professional hotoke phy contest.

Broke the rules I kicked you got in trouble. Your journalist, you get a bunch of quotes. You go to sideways.

You're over the line, right? Like the journalist club, if IT still exists, will get mad at you. Your, your reputation will suffer.

If you're getty photographer, there a list rules of things are able to edit, and most of them, like you can change exposure. That's about IT, right? You can do some dynastic.

If you look at your time, photos, all the allowed to do is vinyard. So they're all just the vinet to Helen back because that's the only button they get. So like that's professional norms.

I don't know what consumer norms are you going to be and what we're seeing as an explosion of consumer photography. And that I think is really chAllenging ing. I don't know, dave, what's your answer?

I I I think about the same. I mean, there's been A A big discussion this year about uh, how people transcribe Donald trump. Uh, there there's been all this thing about sane washington Donald trump will will go on like a nine minute ramble of nonsense. And then a reporter will will essentially try to make IT make sense, which on the one hand is good, useful internal ism, like here are the words that he was trying to say. On the other hand, IT makes somebody who doesn't make any sense, make some sense.

And I think I it's it's a complicated thing, like at what point is my job to make something, make as much sense as possible so I can help my reader understand? And at what point is my job to represent something as IT was in all its messiness? Yeah and it's like IT.

I think that is kind of a perfect analogy for what we're trying to do with photography. And I I don't have great answers because it's especially when it's messy. How on messy you're supposed to make IT is really complicated.

really. The question is, can you make everybody believed in the professional warm? And answer is obviously no.

So I guess the closest that we have around ethics right now is apple's decision that they're not going to allow fully generative A I. Uh, in IOS eighteen and there was the interview with group ber where they're talking like, okay, we're generate cartoons but we're not going generate photoreal stick stuff. And so that's nice when you have someone who is you know not. Enabling all right, bad actions although then you have someone like google who's also, do you like just change the background.

take what you want that does like remind me of like that amazing quote that knew I got from apple john corner that basically was like, okay. We believe the photo is a thing that really happened, which is still not going as for saying, like a photo is the thing you capture with a camera or is light, that is, capture IT is a thing that happened which stolen fits in the model of having a generation of future where there is super great apple model that will just basically fill in the blanks if the image he is good enough, that just needs to confirm that the thing has actually happened so it's like, yeah like was surely that we will continue have journalistic c extend ards and there will be a few of these things like c to P A work in their issues. What I mean, there is no stopping the train that's heading down the tracks of like the absolute apocalypse, of like what the meaning, the meaningfulness of photos on the internet. I truly think if you look at my daughter, she's wanted half years old now when she's a teenager, I don't think you will believe any single image he sees on the internet.

I think the the pieces, this is lost in a lot of the conversation. I think we talk a lot about the sort of really high stakes photos, uh, and we talk a lot about like the photos of a serial number, right? But I think like so much to your point, you you have a Young kid, A I think I have a Young ID me.

I have Young kids now. I got one. He's got hand foot mouth disease right now. Yeah good times .

all around uh, but I think like separation to your point, your kid will probably grow in a world where they don't believe photos they see on the internet. I think that's probably right. But the question of like will they believe photos about themselves from when they were kids is the other part of this that I think is like complicated and is is such a like Normal everyday use case we don't talk about in this context.

But the question of lake, when I when I take pictures of my kid, what is what is what responsibility in in air quotes do I have to like truth and honesty verses like taking a fun picture of my child having fun, uh, I feel like this is such a like, mainstream, every single person use case that we just don't talk about enough, because I IT feels mely, but I don't know. And as you guys think about how I like, people download stuff, in part because they want to make beautiful earth and museum, because they want to take Better pictures that are kids and like, what? What is the job there in in this world?

All my son's photos are a native raw, so I can show them the receipt of the words.

He can develop the negatives himself, exactly A.

No, but that that's a really good point.

They hear son has made you some .

negatives in in every dad has a talk with this sun about noise reduction. It's dangerous world out there and need not to be prepared .

yeah but so mean at that point, like some part of me feels like you know we're going to go back and look at um we're going to recognize this era of mobile photography for looking a certain way. That's just the fact and where we're recognizing the first generation of instagram photos by the heavy filters, which also means people are going to look at the first generation of instagram photos and be like odds are real, there's no generated. And because you can see by how bad these filters are, this was before the end. Times of photographic integrity was just fascinating to me about the way that those fake cpa filters are going to go down in time is like a symbol of authenticity, which at the time we're derided as being univerSally .

deeply real .

photos deeply and really out deeply real photo must be real. And I think we we'd love to kind of in the same in a way, provide that niche too, because we want to offer that extra tool that just gives you A A more authentic shop because it's a bit more true to like what an old fashion camera mind have captured has a bit of ized of that process look going on.

Um but too like I I also believe those photos are more representative of your memories because they they are more like the way you remember a moment, like when I D my photos actually intend to make the sunsets warmer and the cozy times nicer, and the time when I walked in tokyo alone, three blue and more cyberpunk. Y, because that's just the way I felt. And I think those aren't perfect representations of reality. And the greatest come a nominator photography thing is kind of what's making people pull towards start a bit more, and maybe also, ironically, making the pull or towards general things are, or more catia altering photos, because they are deeply unsatisfied with how how perfectly photos represent reality when they are sensing reality around them, but not the world that they perceive or say emotionally.

right? We got to take a break. And when we come back, alison Johnson, about how to take pictures of your kids with A I, I.

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right? We're back. So the virtually elson Johnson has been reviewing all of these A I phone cameras for us all summer. And SHE decided to run experiment on herself that I find very fun.

He basically wanted to go all the way in and figure out what life is like when you just lean into the aines of your phone, all the things that can do for you, all the ways you can change photos, all the upgrades and cool processing things that can do. Just what if you didn't have any existent al crisis about A I photos and cameras and just bought in what would happen? I have been excited for weeks to hear about the results of this experiment, and alison is here now to tell me all that. Allison, hello, hello. We're back to talk about phone cameras because that's what you and I do on this show, is just talk about our feelings about phone cameras.

I love IT. I'm here for you.

I think that might be the official mission statement of verge cast at this point, which is weird. We make an audio product about cameras is a thing that I never .

really thought about. Talk about photos for way.

yeah. So we've been looking for different ways to talk about this stuff. Sometimes it's just like me like having an exceptional crisis on the um but you went out and actually like tried to live out this experiment a little bit in in what the future of photography looks like. Tell me about this experiment you .

been running yeah so the idea was what if I put my off in this headspace of I am using this phone camera to take not photos but memories and just sort of like really with that for a little while I Carried around the pixel nine pro, the memory making machine that IT is um and just kind of set out to like, you know I take a thousand pictures in my kid anyway but I was like I was specially on a mission for you know about a week so we went to the science fair IT was kind of outdoors, indoors um very kind of steam punky cool situation we went to the park, wrote in one of those little fake stationary jeeps he loves that um I went to starbucks is a good sport and and goes with me to get my coffee. So all of the usual things, I just took photos for a week um and about them in to google photos afterwards and push myself to use the tools that I probably wouldn't have done anyway like that we imagine you know take things out of the frame, just kind of put myself in a comfortable position to like try and use as much of the A I as I could well.

so IT makes me think of a conversion and I had this is probably almost a year ago at this point where we were talking about the thing that happens when you go in and edit a photo and you remember you've edited the photo and that something is sort of inexorably changed when you edit the photo that maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, maybe IT doesn't really matter, but like somewhere in your brain, the fact that you move stuffed inside of the photo becomes attached to that photo.

And I feel like a year later were even deeper into that theory being the way that this works. So i'm very crazy here how old this went, but like, give me, give me the set up, how you were thinking about approaching this experience. I feel like I want to make memory is not photos is a very like, beautiful, high minded thing to say that we can interrogate forever, but IT uncursed, if you like, I want to actually live out this definition and and I think it's google in particular, right, that has said a camera is for memory, is is not for photos. So you're like, I want to live in the universe. Google, imagine like, how do you set yourself up to do that?

Yeah IT was mostly in the in the back caf like editing the photos so kind of just went in the goal photos on the phone um and that's where you get the like reimagine to all in all the AI stuff. So IT was like a very uncomfortable territory for me because I really don't like edit phone photos at all. I just kind of like put on my faith in the computational photography process.

So this was an exercise like sitting down and OK like what do this moment feel like versus what's here? And sometimes IT was obvious. IT was like, well, this person was in the frame, and, you know, I my memory is of my child in this situation, not in this persons distracting, so I would take them out.

But then I like, pushed myself beyond d that to kind of be like, is there something I would add to the scene that would make you feel more kind of like express how like a magical whatever IT felt at the time because I think that happens a lot to when you're taking pictures of your camera. Like this is such a special moment and then you go back and is just like not all of their nose and they were kind of a node. You're like, okay, miss the Michael, that one.

But I can imagine to all of that stuff that IT makes sense that that all comes up in in the editing process, right? You there, how did I feel and how does this for to feel? And I I want to interrogate that because I really interesting.

But I can also imagine that you would start thinking differently about the kinds of photos are taking and even like the way you're setting up to take those pictures. Really I thinking about, I was out with my son yesterday. Uh, he loves trains and all he wants to do is there's there's a walking path near a train track and he just wants to stand there and wait for trains.

And a train goes by and he yells and dances and then at least then he just goes more tutu. And then we wait until there's another train and we do that for hours. And I was standing there lake when he would get really excited by train and sort of stop paying attention to me, I would like back up and take a picture of him.

Or and I was like running around, trying get the angle just right and trying to get the the train in the exact rate spot. And I had this thought of like, oh, maybe I don't need to do anything like i'm just going to stay here and just sort of point my camera and like his vade and then worry about that later but also maybe like, do I even need this picture in an I like, I don't know. I just sort of messages are headed in terms of, just like when you decide to hit the shutter button in the first place, did you have any that experience .

I did and I was like more forcing myself to take a photo when I Normally would have meant, like was early gonna interesting someone's in the way or you know, I was like, now i'll take the picture anyway and see what we can do with A I. So that was kind of more my experience and you're kind of like maybe .

there's a good picture in here somewhere. Now I to do take the bad and see what we .

can do later, right? IT IT forced me to take more, I guess. Yeah, i'm i'm like a classic parent photographer where my kid was like he was on a bridge in this little park and i'm like waiting for the perfect moment when he's gonna come running back and he's, you know framed perfectly in the middle the bridge and like just didn't CoOperate you know, like he didn't want to do that but unlike take pictures anyway and see what I can get away with.

okay. So and then take me through the editing process a little bit. You know you mentioned you're not really A A phone editor. I think most people aren't.

I'll do you occasional like one at IT, a little bit of cropping, a little bit straightening, maybe like mess with the saturation every now. And but I I think most people, just like you take ten, you pick the best one and put an answer that, that is pipeline. We've all been thought at this point, yes. But tell me about the process of going in to these photos, and you open one up in this headspace of what is the memory here? This feels like a very like philosophical thing to .

go through every time. Yeah, yeah, he was odd and IT was uncomfortable, honestly. Yeah, just kind of taking taking myself back in in the moment and like opening up those photos. And I really had to like, sit with you for a minute because I was like, what at this is what I remember red like, I was just like this. You know, he was my husband standing here holding our child.

We were looking at something and then that kind of like push myself a little bit more like though the one I came up with this, like one of us is always Carrying a massive diaper bag, like a hundred percent of the time and like a pack meal. And my husband had IT you know this strap around his shoulder in this photo. I was like, well, you know I don't like remember the day bag like is just there like furniture all the time um so I took that out.

You send me a bunch of the photos that you took and i'm looking at them now trying to like guess which ones you're talking about. And there's one your husband he's holding your kid in his right ARM and they're looking at like machinery of some kind that looks like this looks like a very old printing press is kind of what they are like poking at ah yeah and all I see on your husband is is t shirt yeah but you're saying there was a dire bag, A B of a day bag I think you Better right picture I guys actually .

no yeah like there's a big black strap and I don't know it's not like that distracting that you look out. You're like that kind of back. You care around a few if you're hole in a kid everywhere but yeah, it's kind of amazing just how easily you can take something like that out and it's not a chAllenge for generative A. I just like we got IT.

Yeah, i'm looking at this now and there's lake there's a little bit of a wrinkle in a black line kind of going across his chest that probably wouldn't be there.

But if you had never said that, I looked at once said that is being like, okay, where where did you say I? What did he did? And this was one where I I had nothing, no idea, wouldn't have a million years of noticed that this wasn't in, especially the gram size, right? Like even blowing this thing up as big as a exact I never would have noticed so what what tools do and abusing in all this or you're just like in google photos playing with the A I stuff. Like what did you find yourself gravitating to? Messing with these .

photos I stuck with google photos um and I some of these photos we are taking on an iphone um in a different section back you know I know still mess with him in google photos um and I A plodded a bunch of them to instagram which I also about wear about like I was tracking .

my friends. But why tell me more? Why did I feel weird?

IT feels strange because you know, like i've changed enough of a lot of these that they're materially like different. You know i'm like that is not how that seem looked. One of them is cheesy as how there's like birds in the sky that that was a when I was like, I really gotten try this. okay.

So let me can I just explain to that? I saw that really jumped out to. There's one that's like the ten out of ten on this scale, I would think, is a photo that you took of your son in a park. He's driving like a little, looks like a little one of those other stationary cars that you can just sit in. You pretty obviously just put a dinos in the background.

There is a dinosaur there. Now I did that to be a little like, okay, sometimes up here, please don't believe all of IT.

I will also say it's not a very good dinosaur. The head is very good. Yeah, the teeth is just sort of whisps as IT turns into its dinosaur body.

IT has like just kind of too many limbs I think yeah um but that is pretty scary but it's still and this .

is like the six photo in the gallery and I just through and it's like IT works kind of it's fun like I don't think it's real but IT IT does give you a fun like jurassic party kind of I I mean to yeah and then the other one, which is I think the one you were just describing, uh he's running through. I I want to say a field, but it's like a field next to some kind of industrial machine. I don't know what where you were for all of dispute. Everybody looks like .

they're having fun.

This is an interesting bag story. yeah. And so this is one that I actually linger on for a minute because he's he's running and his guys right ARM up in the air and the sky is beautiful and blue.

And there is just this big flock of birds basically right above his head. And if it's if it's not ai, this is like a perfectly reasonable thing to her photograph, right? Like this would be a lovely shot. Like, I would be very proud of you for getting this photo with these dimensions in these particularly.

But then I found myself wondering, like, okay, are the birds just not there? All were the birds like off to the side and SHE just started like grab them and moved them over so that they were directly on top of his head um or is this just a perfectly time photo? And I think my hunch is you put the birds there, but I couldn't say that great confidence.

Yeah yeah. I did add the birds OK wholesale there. There were no birds. There no birds. Um the funny thing is we were at this because IT is science fair. And outside just to the left of where the Lancers, like a giant iron kind of bird sculpture that flaps its wings when you like there's a little pully IT was so cool um and IT was this kind of like you like the sun was hitting just right and I was like so beautiful in lantis is kind of run in around after we played with us saying and he just look super happy I was like, what could I and that would like, make IT feel like that moment fell and I landed on putting these birds in in ges. So cheesy and like, I don't enjoy. I like I look at IT like, you know, the birds are convincing and this is like a pretty photo, but i'm gonna like print IT and put in on the wall, you know, I and I mean.

this is really good back to the like. What is the what is the memory piece of this? Because I I think there is some part of this as a viewer that I immediately like, oh, what a fun, beautiful day outdoors, right? And that's like you're communicating to me.

I think the correct thing, I don't know how much the birds really that like it's it's it's him smiling and running with his arms up that does most of the work in this kind of like communicating the feeling ah, but putting birds there certainly helps to make the photo cooler to look at. But IT doesn't only get accomplished anything for you and I find fascinating like as the person who is likely to look at this photo the most overtime, IT doesn't sound like this improved like you're gonna look at this with fonder memories because of the A I births. Do you put there?

Yeah and I really I really made me think about the whole exercises, like who's this for? Is this what I make these edits for me? So I felt more like what IT was in my mind? Or am I trying to portray something on social media that's like looks more like and I keep coming back to like we have kind of a set of expectations from, like, professional photography, like if we had hired a professional portrait photographer to kind of flow was around for an afternoon, you would sort of expect you like suspender disciple for a little bit like, you know, they know how to get the right moment in the right light and like your kids smiling and not screaming and all that stuff.

And I think this like one way that these A I tools are may be intended to be used as to kind of achieve more of that, like without IT being a professional photographer. And that's where I was like if Fiona, I was like, I don't think this quite works because there's just too much you can't like recreate afterward IT has to be there and like the photos I like or yeah, the things were just fair like when I was having a great time, the light was right. And that what makes IT a good photo, I think, or like a photo, I want to keep looking at, not a ee birds to keep .

on that photo. I think the the thing about what you just said that I I I find very compelling is the idea that like a professional photographer would know how to get the moment when they're not screaming and and like your memory of this day is IT was a very fun day. We all had a really good time, right?

Like I I bet linux, at one point, made a sad face. Or like, or like how to them, just not everywhere, right? Like these things happy. And so I look at this photo and I onder okay. What if, instead of adding birds, you had just open desires, or you had just wiped away this, not on his face?

Or like, i'm thinking about my my own who has a he he's a eighteen month old old boy, so he's his face a disaster all the time and right now he just has this like little scratch right on the side his face. And like, what if all I did was just get through that, just just sort of yanked that away. And my memory of IT is not discretion on his face, right?

My memory of IT is we all had a really nice day, not that he was very slaughter for two thirds of IT and I wonder, like to me, there's a very start line between like I added a dinosaur and I wiped the wait is not but I guess somewhere between those things it's very blurry. But did you did you do any of the like, tiny A I clean up, rather than kind of using the tools to their full extent? Did that feel any different?

Well, so the generate A I in google photos right now will not let you do anything to a person. So, and that's that occurred to me a lot. I was like, well, you know, he looks kind of bomb in this picture. Would I want to change that in the closest? You can get this with best cake.

So I did, like, take birth of photos and then you can kind of pick, you know, the expression you on afterward IT didn't IT it's not super effective with just won subject because you can just pick that photo rather than the IT makes a lot more sense if you have multiple people in the scene but yeah, that was the weird area I was like, I don't know. I think I would like clean up some burgers and not fear to wear about IT in any of that. You get to like a, well, where do I stop doing this? You know, once you like cleaned up burgers, you're like, well, what else can I do now?

right? It's a slip slope to adding dinosaurs like IT literally .

is that's exactly where you ended up. You end up in dinosaurs yeah no. IT was just a strong thing of like I would start taking something out of the backlight. There's a stroller in the background and I raised that and like, well, what else can I take out here? And then the the thing that is so well to meet you just end up with this like the picture, like, I took out all of the clutter and all of the stuff in the background and IT just looks even like, well, where were we? You know, some of that stuff adds the context and the kind of like we were really here doing this thing kind of feeling, and that's what really struck me in this experiment, is like, oh, you can just AI your way into a picture that just could be anywhere, just looks lovely.

totally. yeah. And there is a weird a thing that you see in a lot of sort of overly doctor photos like this, where everything kind of happens in a vacuum, right? Like there are so many photos that if you remove people from the photos, like the a beach is a perfect example, right?

Like if you're at the beach, you are the only person there has actually weird, right, like a nice beach day. So then you you go in and you you do the magic, a reason you get rid of of the suffer. Now IT looks like the rapture has happened under the only person left honors.

And and there just is a strange thing to try to dial in. And there is there is a photo in the the ones that you shared, uh, where linux is like he's playing with a truck on a table and there's like a glass of milk in front of him and there's a blurry person in the background. And this is another one that I I struggled to figure out what, if anything, you have done with a eye.

And i'm curious what the answer is. But I was looking at this sounds like, okay, my immediate instinct to be to remove the glass of milk because it's only like two thirds in frame. And it's not really part of IT.

It's just a little bit distracting. And then like cooky me back over the person, the background. And now i've turned this kind of nice photo of a person living in the world into like a kid at a table in an empty warehouse with nothing. And like, I think I ve made the photo worse.

Yeah, yeah. That's the conclusion I came to a lot. And actually, so the classroom milk is not real.

Oh, really. Yeah, that is, that is a convinced in glass of milk.

Isn't IT we starbucks, but a fancy starbucks? You know, they are like ones where they would like rust the coffee in from you. Oh yeah, he had A A little orange juice bottle, which is, I don't know how you feel about being a parent on instagram like, loaded with sugar and like, well, what if I put something in front of him that wasn't so overtly unhealthy? Quon qi, I don't care if my kid drink swing shoes.

It's basically fun.

So good.

Don't cancel .

us that bad opinions about orange es, yeah, I was like, well, i'll just put a class a milk in front of him like he ordered IT at starbucks yeah and it's super convincing. I was like, all of that child and yeah, you can go like one of the pictures where he is in that little deep in the park, the one that doesn't have .

any dinosaurs has a park .

I actually took out like there's like this building that has the bathrooms. It's like brick and IT IT doesn't look like offensive. IT was just kind of in the background out like, well, maybe I can just put some trees there and it's a thousand percent convinced ing but then it's also like IT IT just looks like some treat like IT doesn't tell me about anything about like .

where we were yeah IT does this the picture becomes very kind of generic in that way yeah one thing I found myself wondering about this process is how you'll think about these photos differently over time.

A A, whether you'll go back to the photo of linux with the birds in six months, a year, five years or fifty years and remember that those birds weren't there, or if you'll forget and think they're part of the photos and maybe that's success in a certain way, but also IT whether changing the photos changes how you'll remember them in a way that feels weird. It's like so much of what we talk about with fotos phy is it's a documentation of a thing. And if you change the thing, you're gna change your memory of the thing, and that all gets very caran philosopher.

But even just like removing people from something is gonna change. How you remember that experience when you go back to the photo? I don't know.

Did are you thinking about that at all? You're going through being like, how do I how do I make this hot? What I remember, red, diverse is what I want to remember that as many, many years from now or how I will remember IT.

Yeah, I like personally, my google photos is my journal at this point like I haven't written in a journal in a long time if i'm trying to remember like where did we go when we were important ten years ago?

I go to google photos and that's where the answer is um so I did come across you know some examples of like I was taking a friend like a friend of ours was kind of half in the frame and I had a picture of linux and my husband and was like, well, i'll take him our friend out of the picture and IT just fills IT in, you know, perfectly. I would never think there was another human there. I was like, well, I gna remember that we were there with our friends on that day. Or am I going, is that like, lost to time? If I taking out the viral, I started feeling really strange about IT and I ended up here.

There's a little of, like, are you lying to your journal that is very strong?

yeah. Oh, which I never lied. My nal would never do that.

Now, who would? yeah. And then figuring out where that scale begins an end is kind of the same thing at the same support is so where you're you're saying, okay, he is, is remembering that my friends were there an important part of this memory? 嗯， sometimes, sometimes, probably not, but sometimes, yes. Uh, is remembering that, you know, whatever here to running knows definitely not uh but like those are, it's just strange to think you're making the decisions now also about the future. Like maybe maybe you will wanna remember that you are there, your friends mabe IT doesn't seem so unification now, but I will later and those are just making that decision now is an interesting way to like you're changing the way that future you remembers this without any real knowledge of how I might do IT right?

It's uncomfortable IT is that was .

exactly the right word for IT like even when it's useful, IT still feels kind of yeah exactly .

did you have any of these that .

you you came out of IT and felt Better about like I keep thinking about that thing you said the beginning real like I took photos I wouldn't have taken otherwise because I like I bet there is a good photo in here somewhere. I find that very compelling. And did you have any of those experiences, anything where you came out of IT and you like, I have made this into something out of nothing?

Yes, I know I have only reinforced my believe that you cannot edit a bad photo into a good .

photo even with A I .

yeah that's true of photoshop. That's true of putting birds and you know AI birds in your photo like nothing is going. I try and are trying to make some just bad photos look Better and they're still stinkers but the thing I am convinced now is I will take more photos where there is someone in the frame and I kind of wish they would move out of the way but you know you can .

ask them to move right .

or um I i'll take more of those photos now and just remove them from the background because I don't feel bad about that and especially if it's like someone else's kid is in the background and it's a picture. You know I can't get my my kid stay still forever so I take the picture anyway and then I can remove the other kids so i'm not putting them on my instagram and like I actually feel fine about that yeah so that's where I .

land and that feels like a good use case. And it's first like the thing that mean that comes to mind there is like whether if you go to the zoo or whatever you are in inevitably going to take pictures of something with a thousand strangers on on all side of IT yeah and you can make a case that actually not only making your photos Better, you're of doing like a public service to the world by removing those people from the photos, like you're fighting the surveilLance state with A I right?

Not .

today. Uh, so how do you feel the end of this experiment has IT your, like you said, a person who takes a lot of photos anyway. Do you take anything away from this? Liming s you think you might act or Operate differently with the camera from no one.

I think the big one is I might rely on IT more further photos when i'm like, well, I couldn't reframe less. And there's someone here and I just don't want them in my photo. IT is very good at that. Sometimes that takes a couple of tries to get like the best version.

But yeah, I was super surprised even with like kind of a complicated background or things in the foreground, I think that's where magic racer hasn't been good in the past and where generate A I actually is like makes IT Better. IT isn't just like a chemic, but there are also gym mics. And like I yeah remain unconvinced that anybody was asking for the ability to like put dinosaur s in their photos and like kind of funny for a minute um but yeah i'm gna stay away from the dinosaurs I think yeah I mean and I think .

because actually like question of who is IT for, right? Because I think there's a there's a world in which you can make the case that this stuff is it's fun to share with people bright, like people who weren't there, people who care about you and and your kid and like it's silly and fun in the way that like I think about the the pictures you get a disney role on a roller coaster, right where they pick this one very specific moment and always has a sillily background and like no one believes that that is like a representative photo of your life. But IT is IT is that to me is actually a perfect example of like that is a photograph of a memory and not of is not a photo, even though in way that is a photo, it's so exactly staged and put together and directed and and surrounded with a frame that like they make a memory out of that in a way that I think is is mostly cool and fine yeah but there is still something different about IT when you're doing IT on your phone and your camera roll in this like very monday things yeah like the taking out the uh background of a shot of a park to remove a building is like not the same thing as the roller coast shott is in world in a way that i'm still having trouble putting my finger on. It's not the same.

Yeah no, I agree. I think that a good analogy.

But so what what has this given you in terms of new perspective on the what is a photo to be like do by google? Memory is not photos. This is a little more, even if IT doesn't quite pan out reality.

I you know, I don't know, I don't want to give them too much credit. Do in a way you know like the thing that struck me is really it's such a different approach than than the iphone sixteen camera um which is more about you know the new photographic styles and kind of um their response to what is a photo is like i'll give you the tools to dialing the color in the skin tones the way you see IT, which is is kind of they're answering the same question and it's not like we're going to reproduce this thing the way absolutely was.

It's sort of putting him giving you more input over like now IT felt more like this so I looked more IT looked warmer guar adding dinosaurs your photos is not a thing you know you can do with iphone camera presently. Um but I kind of struck me how they're both kind of turning from this like pushed to like represent reality as faithfully as they can and like do IT with as many you know as much of data as they can Carry him into a single image and it's sort of turning to like. No, you make the call on this actually yeah there's .

a real like theory of relativity thing happening in photography that is maybe true like IT has. I think IT has never been true that cameras perfectly captured exactly everything right in the real like it's just never been true um it's just that now the tools with which you can make IT more real are the same tools with which you can make IT less real yeah I think you can't have one without the other, right? Like if you if you give me the tools, I can I can inevitable use them in both distractions yeah we have to decide for okay with that I think yeah and I like the magic of risk thing is really interesting because the tech is getting Better like shockingly fast uh, and I think is probably going to keep getting Better shockingly fast for a pretty long time. So like the the capabilities are not getting worse anytime soon.

B, M.

right. Before we go, give me, give me the single worst example you had. What was there a photo you made? Disastrous ly, unusable, would never share with another soul in this product.

Let's see. I try to do a enter my vacation. We went to iceland last year and there's literally the waterfall that is in the magic racer. Like promotional if their like it's called cog for or something i'd like. I'm not pronouncing IT right, but they're like, look, beautiful waterfall.

You can take all the people out and over suddenly you have the water forty years so I did that and it's like the most boring figure photo waterfall. And like, what have I done here? Like i'm not now I put, I put the people back in.

This is my same sung makes the moon beautiful so you don't have to worry about IT just thank you. You want the moon? Here's the moon. Yes, yes, you can have IT. I I put the people back in is a pretty good that's like a memory title for you when you write about what is a photo.

I'm writing that down right now.

right? Alison, thank you. As always.

Thank you. right? We got to take one more .

break and then we're going to come back. Take a question from the first cast outline, 不 bear back。

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right? We're back. Let's go to the high line. As always, the number eight, six, six, verge one, one, the email verge cast at the verge dot com. We love all your questions.

We try to answer at least one on this show every single week. Thank you again. Everybody who reaches out, they all get funneled into a slack room that more and more people keep requesting access to because it's so fun to hear all of your awesome questions.

So thank you to everybody reaches out this week. We have a question god helps me about running. Hello, bird caps, this exact from off stage.

I have a few hundred dollars that I wanted to spend on a new gadget, and i've been looking at the pixel buds pro two. I have the original prose, and i'm mostly happy with them. But when I take up running, they often aren't very secure, and I thought the protons s would fix that.

However, i've recently been intrigued with a made of rape bang glasses. I think that worked well on my runs, incorporating sunglasses and speakers for music and the new fun class attack that I don't have. However, i'm all in on the google ecosystem and pixel products, and I didn't want to add a new assistant or AI to my life.

If you are in my position, what would you purchase? Thank you. This song is here to help me, help you.

Hi, I know.

okay. So I I want I want to refrain this question very slightly, uh, because I think I don't want to spend a ton of time litigating the pixel buds s specifically in part is because everybodys ears are different, right? And the only actually good advice we can give us, try them by both try to happen.

But I do think the question of, uh, can the raby's made a smart glasses be a kind of multipurpose useful exercise thing is a question we've actually got a bunch of times. So I want to talk about that and I also want to throw in uni, uh, have both tried in our fans of the the shocks open runs. So I think in in those three categories, you have the headphones to go in your years of the bone conduction headphones and new smart classes. Uh, you're literally in running here right now about to go running. My first question is, what are you going to put in or on or near your ears when you run today?

Today when I run, i'm going to be wearing the shocks open run. Uh, pro two. I genuinely love them there. I used to be a big beats fit properly ah and then I moved to the suburbs and the range rovers here or unhitched a is a safety thing. I really need situation awareness.

So i've been wearing these and I just love them compared to the previous versions of aftershocks because the base is decent. Like if you really love base, does I can do IT for you. But compared to other bone conduction had forms the basis quite good.

The sound quality for reboot conduction is quite good. And it's because it's using um some like regular air conduction speakers. On top of the bomb conduction to the base is the air conduction and the the midden trouble are but conduction works.

Great, really love IT pretty secure is not falling off. But to to to the to the point of the question, it's not great if you want to wear a glasses on top of IT. Like everyone's faces are different, everyone's ear capacity is different. I am pretty narrow year to head space, I guess what you you would say.

So when I don't feel like wearing contacts, want of running and I put the event, uh the the shocks and and I am my glasses is on or my sun glasses on is very crowded, uh, in the ear space and that is like, but I think my biggest complaint of those so far, so mea river are fucking great if you just want to consolidate two things and like I I did several miles this summer um wearing them at three bands as as like a two and one. It's both my sunglasses and it's my form of audio. Like it's actually pretty great for that. If you are running in a relatively quiet area or you're not like by like a highway is you buy a highway. It's it's just not it's not going to 抵达 for .

you yeah in terms of lake running in loud environments， it's in your headphones of the move. And then honestly, I would take bone conduction is second and then like big gap metal revenant glasses, like those things if there if there's a truck idling that you run by, like your to actually here with your toast.

And also if you are someone who runs races. So I am near a cafe marathon on a couple years ago with the boss tempo love to the bus. Tempo was great during all throughout my training.

Like this is great. I'm going to do this race cake is the general role for runners is nothing new on race day. You want to have practice everything before when they are blasting music at these races.

A critical failure on my part I have my very specific uh, running players. IT is highly accurate um and I was like, I do not jump with these James and I really kind of ruined my my vibe so like in that sense, they're not great. So really depends on where you're running. The other issue I have with the material is that they are happier.

That was my question. I I my only real worry in recommending these to a lot of people is just that they are large, like physically heavy sunglasses and I I am not a consistent enough underway in on this, which is the thing I was most curious about from you. But like you've complained about how heavy they are when you're not trying to run fast and long, how do they feel in a in a real like runs in and see .

if you're really like fuck careless. You really like there was too much. But like the more you run the swear, you are especially this in the summer, especially if you're wearing a hat.

So like like I said, I wear them a lot from my mileage and during the summer and now I have a little hat to protect to me because the sun is deadly ah and I have the ray bounds and like i'm running in eighty plus degree weather, high humidity and jersey, my face gets sweet sun screen is just like melting down my face, these things. And so like you know, these classes are pretty good if you have A A low low bridge like I do. But when you have sweat and sunscreen, like a little bit like a little, but that's just like inevitable because you are in a up and down running motion.

Um if you're doing like really long my ledge on to say I give your training for a ha for you're training for americans on um you kind of got a deal with the fact that they are heavier atterly life like it's hard to say because you could be a fricken cheeto and a half marathon is like now a half for years. So like whatever, i'll be fine for your long runs or you will be slow like me where you're just like you're like turtle steady does that and you're running like two and a half hour to three hour half marathon's and you just like, this is batteries and I should work if you're fully charged. But on whom among this always has a fully charged had phone when we run up the door. So like IT IT is you plan a little bit with fire there. So yeah like unfortunately, you're around to try a couple of things.

So but what that sounds like your thing is that if you're just a person who do ort of casually runs for exercise, you just want to like get out the morning and run a couple miles to get the blood lowing. All those concerns you just described probably don't really apply. So you should mostly be fine with the .

with the radiance, right? Yeah, you should mostly be fine so long as you do not run by highways construction like I have done that and you're not going to hear anything. Um you know obviously fit is very personal so before you buy, I would go to the store and see having IT fit under base.

But I actually really enjoyed running with them the summer of particularly when I was really Sunny and the I don't want to have multiple things sitting in my year. It's actually very smart is a very smart option. But again, loud environment races, you're probably gonna have a good time going, especially with a big race IT might not be a problem with a smaller is and you're not blasting like somebody else is playful. But for me, I get a big race when I wore the both temp as like I ve made a huge mistake because I had to listen to like pit bull. And pit bull doesn't get me going for a runs.

so no one needs that for a have athon. The thing I keep thinking about with all of this is just that we can't be that far away from like the wrap around the oak as smart glasses like that is so clearly the next one of these you would do if you're meta, everybody is in into health and fitness is a wearable thing. It's exactly for the people are describing like somebody is gna make those like rainbow ended rap on oakers with the the crook's is on the back that you can just secure your head and it's gonna rape and metal glasses and they are going to sell so many of those and that becomes the answer to this question because then it's like you're going to look like a do face, but it's going to rule and you're going to win this.

So congratulate. That was the both fit temple already did IT both just didn't manage that side of the business well. But like you can see some of my pictures from that, my first in your city half marthon, I am wearing the both fit time, but I look like a fork inger bronic.

And you know, if if, if they could have beaten the the people and the pop music that I am not a fair just blasting, IT would have been perfect as as well as I was just like, I can hear my gap up. I have no motivational al, this is terrible. So those are all things to consider if you really want to go with the moderate .

dance running what's on the running play .

this right now a lot stray kids uh because um as far as key pop goes are not very bubble gump. There are kind of White pots and pans, a crazy electronics music and it's just like him. My, ah, there's a beat.

I can go to that. I hate everything right now, but I I can go, I can go. I also I A lot of times I want to cap p because super fluent in korean. So I can just be like ignoring what they're saying and it's just lucky ah they're just saying you can do IT that's great. I love this for me.

Um yeah i'm a very .

I need a uh a lot of bed and a lot of Price when I run otherwise like I don't know how people listen to podcast or audio books because I just stop there's nothing like so yeah is so it's like I could just listen to this audio book on a couch.

I don't need to be suffering what I run so yeah allow your kids sha buzz and dark words they have the song and start a riot like like who are you gonna a start right? And i'll run will be like me, I am starting the riot. Oh yeah, I love that. Well.

I think my recommendation for this question is start with the ravins a because there are really fun gadget. And if you just have a few hundred doors you to blow get, it's a really good one to mess with. There are super fun.

You'll enjoy them, take them on a run and a half, and you will immediately know whether they work for you or not. And then you can try the other things. But I think if if the if the reviens work for you that feels like the most fun outcome here, so I would they start there.

that is the most fun. And if those those don't work, highly recommend the shocks just because like you look at any running influencer on tiktok right now, they all got shocks on their year. They all got that exact thing.

They all love IT. And unlike yeah, I do too. I was was pleasantly surprised by the latest solution of open around.

I've started using them for runs, for dog walks, for like pushing the stroller to go pick up my. And now it's like, you know, thing, when you get a car in all of the time, you start seeing the car that you have everywhere. Uh, that has been my experience of these.

They are everywhere and everyone I see who is like, wait too good at running those people who like, you know, if you like, meet tham, they would talk to you about how much they like running. They all wear them and I feel like IT makes me hate myself and them. But it's also like, clearly there's there's something here.

Yeah there's like, literally I have been seeing every single running and one so just like upgrading to them and going like, oh my god and they have the same opinions that I had. So like go yeah like it's it's a real thing and they're slit the very idea I got caught in a rainy run the other day, four miles, or just like rain and IT worked great. I would be less confident that the meta bouncer survive four mile run. And like pretty, pretty decent curricle e hallie left over rain shower. So like you, you ve got a kind of like think about that as well.

all right. Well, I hope that helps you.

Thank you. Is so far got speed.

all right? That is IT for the verge cast today. Thank you to everyone who came on the show, and thank you, as always, for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about, including Allison's great story about her memories, all of our coverage of high light, all of our phone reviews, many, many thoughts about A I need.

I did a really fun thing comparing the different cameras on the different smart t phones and how they use A I to do ts of that on the version I com. I'll put a lot links to the website, website. And as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings or other cameras you think I should buy, you can always email advertised at the first com or call the one eight six six verge one one we really, really, really love hearing from you.

This shows produced by liam, James wilpon and erik go as verge cast is verge production in part of the box media podcast network meal. And I will be back on friday to talk about all kinds of news going on this week. There's more s there's interesting gadgety stuff going on. We might get some apple stuff soon. Lets to talk about will see them.

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