Speaking of Google Photos Magic Eraser: Adobe released an update to its Lightroom editing software touting a similar feature. Users like me can now harness the power of AI - as is seemingly everything these days - to remove unwanted objects from photographs. That’s nothing for me to get excited about, because I’ve largely stopped editing my pictures. (The most I do now to my photos is straighten the horizon. Dutch angles absolutely grinds my gears.) I am a straight-out-of-the-camera kind of photographer now. Those Fujifilm film simulations are just that amazing and convenient.
In my opinion, the best way to implement AI is to make it invisible. Don’t tell me it’s AI at all. Let AI do all the magic in the background. The user should only see the end result. Take this new Lightroom feature for example: AI removal should be integrated into the existing cropping and cloning tools. The program has always had the capability to crop things out of photos. It’s obviously more powerful and easier thanks to generative AI, but why mention AI at all? Simply say the crop tool is now way better.
I don’t care that Grammarly is using AI to make its writing assistance software better. I only care that the software works, and works well.
Of course, the cynical take would be all these companies are hopping on to AI in order to upsell (hashtag profits). Adobe is adding AI to Photoshop and Lightroom so they can easily justify increasing the monthly subscription fee in the future (mark my words). Microsoft adding Copilot AI to its Office apps is merely an excuse to charge more on the subscription. Extra computing power is not free, am I right? But what if I only want simple Microsoft Word - without the fancy AI stuff? I doubt there’s going to be an AI-less tier for a cheaper price.
What I would not be surprised is Microsoft adding an ad-supported tier of MS 365 for a lower price. Have you used Windows 11 lately? Ads are creeping in already…
And round and round it goes.