During the Google I/O 2023 conference, the company talked about the new Google Photos service tool – Magic Editor. It uses generative AI to make major changes to photos without using professional tools.

The operation of this tool was demonstrated on the example of two pictures: a woman against the background of a waterfall and a child with balloons. In the first case, Magic Editor removed the distant figures of tourists near the waterfall and the bag strap on the jacket, replaced the gloomy sky with blue, and then moved her figure to the right — correctly creating a suitable background where she was.

In the second case, the editing is very similar: Magic Editor moved the bench so that the child was closer to the center of the picture, while the tool finished drawing the cropped balloons and lengthened the bench and replaced the clouds with more “photogenic” ones.

Magic Editor is a logical step after other Google Photos tools, such as Photo Unblur, which improved the clarity of photos, and Magic Eraser, which allows you to remove unwanted objects from a photo. Yes, it does not work perfectly even on official materials (for example, it left folds on the jacket from the removed belt), but if in real photos this tool will work as well and as quickly as in these videos. Then the question what mobile photos become (which again rose after the uproar around photos of the Moon on Samsung smartphones), will become even more relevant.

So you can start worrying about the “authenticity” of mobile photos very soon: Google promises to provide “early access” to Magic Editor on “select Pixel smartphones” later this year.