Pixel 9 photos are so good they’re terrifying

We knew that the camera and camera app in the Google Pixel 9 would be good. But we didn't expect them to be terrifying. Google has gone all-in on AI editing and generation, and the results are both extremely impressive and quite frightening.

Google isn't the only tech firm pushing AI into its imaging. Apple's doing it with the Image Playground in iOS that'll launch with the iPhone 16, and Samsung has a drawing-to-image feature in the Galaxy S24. But Google's implementation is much more ambitious, and is already making people uneasy. For decades we've believed that the camera never lies. But every Pixel 9 is potentially a very convincing deepfake machine.

The Pixel 9 is the deepfake phone

The key feature here is called Reimagine, and it takes the existing Magic Editor and gives it superpowers. Where Magic Editor enabled you to change parts of an image or remove unwanted bits, Reimagine enables you to add things that weren't there, and for them to appear utterly realistic.

Lots of reviewers have been sharing their experiments with the feature on social media. The Verge has shared some of their own versions online, turning a placid river scene into a helicopter crash, adding sinkholes into city roads and turning empty streets into body-strewn murder scenes. I've seen other journalists add pets that don't exist to their family photos; others have been manipulating food photos to make them look like they're lethal, which is going to be interesting in apps such as Yelp. 

From a technological perspective it's absolutely incredible. But it's deeply worrying too. We've long been able to manipulate images, but that's required both the right software and editing talents. With a Pixel, every phone owner is potentially a one-click deepfake creator.

In a post-truth world where politicians are already sharing faked images online, where their supporters are going even further and where schoolboys are deepfaking images of schoolgirls that's deeply concerning. These are not AI images as you'd expect them to look: most AI images are easy to spot. These ones look real, and they're certainly good enough to fool the kind of people who already and unwittingly share fakes on Facebook.

What Google has done with the Pixel is absolutely astonishing. It's one of the most frightening things I've ever seen.