Google Photos' Magic Editor Will Refuse To Make Some Edits (androidauthority.com) 50
Combing through the code of the new version of Google Photos app for Android, some users have found that Google plans to restrict Magic Editor, a feature it unveiled at Google I/O this year, from making certain kinds of edit. AndroidAuthority: Summarizing the strings above, it seems Magic Editor will refuse to edit:
1. Photos of ID cards, receipts, and other documents that violate Google's GenAI terms.
2. Images with personally identifiable information.
3. Human faces and body parts.
4. Large selections or selections that need a lot of data to be generated.
1. Photos of ID cards, receipts, and other documents that violate Google's GenAI terms.
2. Images with personally identifiable information.
3. Human faces and body parts.
4. Large selections or selections that need a lot of data to be generated.
Don't install Google tools to do real work people (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what open source applications are for: they don't spy on you and they don't decide what you can and cannot do with YOUR device.
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Part of this (potentially the most important part if talking "AI") is running on their servers, so it doesn't matter if you'd be using Firefox to do the edits (you can't, because it's one of the few things they have to brag and keep it for now exclusive to Pixel 8s, but the editor from Google Photos Web is similar to the application and probably most of this stuff will come to that too).
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Who cares? As long as it doesn't forbid editing boob pictures and prank fake news photos, which will probably be 95% of what it is going to be used for.
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if you are editing images and are not NASA or satellite image company (and both will have machines for that) , you WILL NOT use 2TB or ram nor even GPU
Even RAW big pictures, almost any modern computer can handle it without any problem
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If you try editing a 6-12 image panoramic or focus stacking set of 100 megapixel images off my Fuji GFX100....you might need a "little" bit of GPU and ram....
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if you are doing that, you are also not using the cloud for sure... ;)
6 to 12 pictures @ 100megapixel, from a 9k US$ camera, you are not just playing with photos
and you probably already have a computer good enough to support that camera
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Maybe you're missing the AI aspect of the photo editing in this conversation? They're describing the hardware requirements to run an AI engine, which Google is supplying from a data center in this case.
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That doesn't appear to be the case, at least when using the tools on a phone. The AI stuff is run locally on-device.
You can test it by enabling airplane mode and editing photos.
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the AI needing RAM and GPU is to analyzing and "indexing" all the data, you don't need that on a single photo, you have algorithms to find faces, remove objects, etc ... it is not creating that info from a huge set of photos, it is looking to a single photo and checking key components
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Because you think that's what you need to do photo editing?
You've spent too much time using "progressive apps" that need a full gigabyte just to say Hello World.
Re: Don't install Google tools to do real work peo (Score:3)
You can run stable diffusion on a middle of the road gaming PC. The only thing it can't do that you could do on a larger platform is work with more than about 768x768 pixels at a time, buy since Google has announced you're not going to be able to do large selections, that is not a differentiator.
This is just stupid (Score:2)
These days, most receipts are just used to look up the transaction number. There's nothing to be gained by editing a receipt, and the retail clerk would immediately know you're up to some kind of fraud when what's on your receipt doesn't match what comes up on the POS when they pull up the transaction record.
An electronic copy existing online is generally the case with most official documents these days. Florida has a driver's license app which lets you check validity with the DMV, and things like busines
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First, it's *their*.
Second, simply presenting said signature means nothing when the real owner shows up and the signatures don't match.
Third, you're thinking of the "tenant from hell" [latimes.com] who got around paying [yahoo.com] for the AirBnB hotel room she was staying at because:
"She was not required to pay rent because the city had never approved the unit for occupancy and that its shower was constructed without a permit."
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Receipts are still used for plenty of reimbursement arrangements. A big one that comes to mind is HSA reimbursement. If you pay out of pocket for a medical expense you can bank that receipt for future reimbursement.
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These days, most receipts are just used to look up the transaction number. There's nothing to be gained by editing a receipt, and the retail clerk would immediately know you're up to some kind of fraud when what's on your receipt doesn't match what comes up on the POS when they pull up the transaction record.
The receipt alterations are for businessmen padding their expense accounts. Spend $20 on dinner and claim $200. Spend $15 on a cab ride for six blocks and claim $150 for a cab from manhattan to New Jersey.
The assumption is that it would be too much work to verify; as long as it superficially looks good, it's fine.
Wait... (Score:2)
What good is it then?
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Stupidly humorous (Score:5, Insightful)
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Apple doesn't allow any face enhancement in its camera app at all. No skin smoothing or blemish removal.
Google allows some skin smoothing, and has tools to re-light faces, but stops short of letting you do too much editing to the point where the image isn't representative of something you could achieve with lights and moderate amounts of make-up.
Huawei and Xiaomi give you every tool in the box.
It's a decision based on the known negative effects of heavily photoshopped images creating unrealistic standards o
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Apple doesn't allow any face enhancement in its camera app at all. No skin smoothing or blemish removal.
Google allows some skin smoothing, and has tools to re-light faces, but stops short of letting you do too much editing to the point where the image isn't representative of something you could achieve with lights and moderate amounts of make-up.
Huawei and Xiaomi give you every tool in the box.
It's a decision based on the known negative effects of heavily photoshopped images creating unrealistic standards of beauty.
Oh, I'll bet these folk go ree over TikTok filters.
I'll stick with Photoshop, which doesn't decide for me what is politically acceptable.
Example - a young lady I took a portrait of at my old job had a really bad acne breakout just before her security/professional picture had to be taken - strangely part of my job. But I minored in art photography, so that's where the connection is. She was not at all happy, but I said I could do something with it. So I spent some hours removing the blemishes. She was ha
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Photoshop has some built in limits. Try editing a high resolution photo of a US bank note.
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Photoshop has some built in limits. Try editing a high resolution photo of a US bank note.
True dat. That's a likely criminal action as well. Even xerox machines are designed to sense currency, and won't do it unless it is copied significantly larger or smaller. Been a while since I've used one, so I'm assuming the technology is only better now.
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Likewise, it wants accurate records of your personal ID and your purchase receipts.
After which they are no longer "yours".
I'm Sorry Dave, I'm Afraid I Can't Do That (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes sense, limit liability and load (Score:2)
I can see the editing of id cards, it's a legal liability if someone creates a fake id, alter legal documents. I can see someone suing them if someone made fake identity documents used in a crime
I can see them limiting too complex queries because of the load if they are offloading it to the cloud... a lot of companies do that. one example is chatgpt. Some service is better than no service
of course there are workarounds and software that will allow you to do that... they are mostly covering their behinds
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we all know the reason why. It is a reaction to the story outa that NJ high school, where some boys took some public images of some of the girls and deep-faked-up some nudes.
Of course everyone is 'shocked' as if after a handful of Hollywood celebrities the next set of AI assisted fake nudity was ever going to be anything besides high school girls ginned up boys that are afraid to talk to them. And shit maybe they should be afraid to talk to them after all, telling a broad she 'looks fetching in that skirt
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I am not saying it isn't distasteful, but teenage boys are basically know for doing distasteful things. Its pretty much in their nature. I don't see a lot good reasons to get terribly upset about it, unless you want to get upset about a whole lot of other stuff that is tolerated, like porn - but the left wants to have it both ways.
Either nudes are fundamentally exploitative or they are not. I would say computer generated nudes are if anything less exploitative than any traditional pornography because there
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I can see the editing of id cards, it's a legal liability if someone creates a fake id, alter legal documents. I can see someone suing them if someone made fake identity documents used in a crime
I can see them limiting too complex queries because of the load if they are offloading it to the cloud... a lot of companies do that. one example is chatgpt. Some service is better than no service
of course there are workarounds and software that will allow you to do that... they are mostly covering their behinds
You can violate copyright and alter legal documents with scissors, tape, a scanner, and a copier. But Canon, Epson, Xerox, and the public library employees who make the equipment available to everyone who walks in, aren't legally liable for what you do with the technology. In a sane world, this would be how it always works.
In our current world, however, you only have the rights granted to you by the most recent judicial ruling, so it's easier to collaborate with the Chilling Effect and move on with your lif
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Re: Makes sense, limit liability and load (Score:2)
It's not going to do that.
It's only going to prevent them from editing ID images with AI.
It will still let you scribble on your ID photo to cover up PII.
Sounds entirely reasonable (Score:2)
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The rest ... well if you view the tool as a "generate useful data for Google" tool, then it's what you would expect. If you view it as a "photo editing app", well there your expectations may be a bit excessive.
Generally I fast-forward through the adverts, but I caught a Google app a few days ago (is there some Festival of Mammon going on ?) while I was preparing my dinner and couldn't reach the contro
Good for competitors, not sure for society (Score:2)
Any missing functionality that customers need will open opportunities for other, less ethical competitors.
Imagine a world where anyone can create anything, without ANY restrictions except raw materials.
Both digital and physical.
Text or imagery, videos, sculptures, papers. Replicas of Mona Lisa, diamonds, documents, pornography, essays, weapons and ammunition, buildings.
How would the world like?
What could go wrong?
Where would you draw the line?
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Who cares... (Score:1)
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And most people just use real editors
Most people? I'm pretty sure most people do no such thing.
Most people are morons.
Sounds hard to moderate (Score:2)
What constitutes "images with personally identifiable information"? A license plate? A photo of the big tree in my front yard?
Blatent False Advertising (Score:2)
This sounds like they're blatantly showing an ability in advertising that the phone will not do.
Photoshop retricts certain stuff as well (Score:1)
I never tried this, but I heard Photoshop implemented anti-counterfeiting protocols. That means that every time you scan something, Photoshop would check to see if you just scanned certain popular currencies. Yes, it slowed scanning down. What a horrible burden to put on 99.99999% of the users of Photoshop to prevent criminal activity. I'll stick with open source so as to not be burdened with software that, just-in-case, won't let me do something I would never do anyway.