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Comment by cromka | Hacker News Reader

Spatial Framing? Yay, even more fakeness in photos, creating ever more artificial, never-happened memories!

Seemed like the kids were no longer looking at the camera. I don't know what's worse - fixing it or not fixing it.

There's something dystopian about the way that they are championing the blurring of the lines between photos and AI generated content with no consideration for the implications of that tech. Apple likes to pretend they are conservative with this tech rather than simply being behind, but this type of thing isn't a conservative feature.

Absolutely. I hoped they'd backtrack a bit on AI/algorithmic processing after so many influencers started to shit on the overly processed photos. Instead they not only ignore that, but they double down on making our own content even more fake.

It also goes against Apple's earlier statements about how photos should reflect real memories as they happened, not an idealized version like what Goolge was pitching during their Pixel 10 launch event last year.

Turns out they didn't actually believe that, they only said it because they were behind on GenAI. They caved to investor demand, no longer stand for any principles (if they ever had any in the first place)

They may, actually, believe that, however possibly their users might very vocally not believe that in feedback.

Sometimes you just have to give customers what they claim to want instead of fighting them every step of the way.

There will be a generation of children who will grow up and look back at their childhood photos and wonder if they ever really happened.

I also laughed out loud when they are showing the "cleanup" tool and they guy is talking about removing "distractions" and then removes 2 of the 3 girls juggling and having fun.

Ah yes, those friends you were forming core memories with, or as our tech overlords call them, distractions.

Wow. That's a very good observation, actually. We forget our photos are not only our memory. Those YT guys who geotrack photo memories will have a much harder time in the future. Just look at that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO6Hf3SdVcY

Don’t worry. By the time they grow up they’ll just ask the AI for a summary of their childhood.

I was thinking about this, i’m sure there’s been a black mirror episode, but one thing i think back to is one where the us gov used ai to alter a stoic expression on an arrested protestors face and altering it to look like she was crying because that’s what they wanted to portray.

It’s a bullying tactic, i shiver to think how some people will make happy memories out of things that aren’t.

Google pushes the exact same thing. The onboarding flow when I setup my Pixel highlighted a few new features and they gave that prime attention real estate to that same exact feature, showing how you can remove objects from a photo. The specific example was extremely silly, something like removing a tent from a camping photo. Thank god we don't have to see objects that were a core part of the memory being photographed!

I got a depressed-laugh out of the "clean up" demo. It's nothing new, but they always use other people as the example of "distractions". There's something very old-school stalin-style dystopian about normalizing airbrushing out everyone else from your photos because their existence is "distracting". [0] Show me an example with like... a leaf blew in the frame or something. Not straight up "this photo isn't about my friends that took this photo with me, get rid of them".

[0] https://www.youtube.com/live/hF8swzNR1-o?t=3800s

I would bet money that by the end of the decade an Apple engineer would have been summoned to court to testify whether or not a photo taken on an iPhone is admissible evidence for a criminal case.

"Here's what I wish the memory was!"

"But I'll pretend it was a real one for the next 30 years. This, or I'll never look at that 'photo' again."

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