I had really hoped that Apple would stay away from all the useless bells and whistles that get in the way of doing actual work. Services like Instagram introduced us to the concept of “filters” on our photos. Today, every phone — sadly, even iPhones — has a bunch of filters you can choose from to make your photo less realistic. Which apparently is an important thing.
Here is my “dramatic cool” breakfast.
Years before we were labeling everything as “A.I.”, certain Android phones had built-in features like object removal, and similar apps were available as a download for iPhones. You could use this to remove something from your photo that you did not want to be there. While I do understand the usefulness of this, it was just one of many things that will be making the future view of history less accurate. “We have 50,000 photos of this person, but we still don’t know what they actually looked like…”
I had really hoped Apple would avoid all that, but, sadly, with the latest iOS 27 release, even more A.I. stuff has made it into the iPhone.
Here is my breakfast photo.
In spite of me taking digital photos since 1996, I still do not claim to be a photographer. I really don’t know anything beyond “point and shoot.” So, sure, I cut off the edge of the plate and English muffin. I was focusing on the main breakfast. No one really needs to see the edge of the muffin or plate, do they?
Yet, with Apple Intelligence, now you can “extend” a photo and get fake versions of what might have been there.
Did the right side of the English muffin really look like that? Unlikely. I could have already taken a bit out of it, and the camera would not know.
There is also a reflection on the table on the top right of the photo. The A.I. tried to make up something that might be sitting there, casting the reflection. But it sure looks … off.
A.I. is just a tool.
You can use a shovel to dig a hole, or use it to hit someone over the head with. The tool is not the problem. Most of us have sharp knives in our household we use in the kitchen, and never use them as weapons of violence.
Just like a straight edge (ruler) allowed “anyone” to draw a straight line, A.I. tools now allow a bad photographer to take a better (?) photo. Well, not actually take, but “fix it later.”
And the world will never know they are looking at partially fake A.I. generated English muffins.
When I brought up my breakfast photo example on my Facebook page, Reece Piccolo-Sellin showed me a definite use for this technology. He provided me with this version of my breakfast photo:
Maybe I can get behind this technology after all…
Until next time…