Last week, Google showed off its latest smartphone, the Pixel 9.
The mobile is packed with new AI functions that will change how everything from voice control and camera to weather app and calls work.
One of these features is called “Pixel 9 Magic Editor”. It allows Pixel users to easily add, remove and move objects in existing images using AI technology.
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Weak security barriers
Reviewers on the technology site The Verge got to test the function in advance on Wednesday.
“You can select any non-human object or part of an image and type in a text prompt to generate something there. The results are often very convincing and even eerie. The lighting, shadows and perspective almost always match the original photo. You can add fun things, like wildflowers or rainbows or whatever. But that’s not the problem,” the reviewer wrote Allison Johnson when.
So what is the problem? Well, it’s apparently very easy to get around the AI feature’s security barriers.
The Verge managed to add several offensive objects to common images – a corpse under a sheet, a car crash, a bomb and a heroin syringe, to name a few.
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“Extreme fucking fake”
Now have The Verge published another article – with the title “No one is ready for this”, about the “Pixel 9 Magic Editor”, this time written by the editor of the site Sarah Jeong.
“An explosion in an old brick building. A crashed bike in a city intersection. A cockroach in a takeout box. Each of these images took less than ten seconds to create with the Pixel 9 Magic Editor. They’re sharp. They’re in full color . They’re high definition. There’s no background blur, no revealing sixth finger. These photographs are incredibly convincing, and they’re all extremely fake,” she begins.
Jeong further expresses his concern about how easy it will soon be for anyone to manipulate and alter images – just by having a mobile phone.
She believes that photographs in the near future will not be able to constitute any evidence that an event has actually occurred, and that fake news will become an increasingly large social problem.
“We briefly lived in an era where photography was a shortcut to reality, to knowing things. It was an incredibly useful tool for navigating the world around us. Now we’re plunging headlong into a future where reality is simply more uncertain .”
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Google’s answer
Google has responded to criticism of the “Pixel 9 Magic Editor” feature’s lack of security locks.
“At times, certain prompts can challenge the tool’s security barriers, and we remain committed to constantly improving and refining the security guidelines we have in place,” the company wrote in an email to The Verge.
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