https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIBigyt23js
At Google I/O 2023, the company had much to say about generative AI. For example, we saw Google’s chatbot, Bard, roll out to more countries/languages and learned how the tool can now integrate with other Google services, such as Maps and Sheets. Google also announced a new “Help me write” tool in Gmail, which does exactly what you’d expect. One of the more controversial announcements, though, was Magic Editor, a new system that can create generative AI images using photos you’ve already captured.
Only a few days after I/O, we published an opinion piece about the problems we saw with Magic Editor. Essentially, the tool begs the question: What even is a photo? If a photograph is a captured moment of reality, isn’t manipulating that moment to reflect a wholly different reality a substantial ethical problem? In other words, if you take a photo of your family on a cloudy day and alter it with Magic Editor to incorporate a sunny sky instead, doesn’t that change a core aspect of the memory that photo reflects? Where is the line for this manipulation?
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