The AI Chicken Littles Are Looking in the Wrong Place (Premium)

Google's new smartphones arrive tomorrow, but all the mainstream reviewers can talk about is their faux concerns about AI photo editing.

As you may know, I preordered a Google Pixel 8 Pro, and it will likely arrive after we leave for the airport tomorrow. And that means I won't be able to use or review it until after we get back from Mexico City in early November. That's not ideal, but at least I don't need to worry about the delivery as we have a nephew staying in our apartment during the trip and he can sign for the phone whenever it does arrive. So that's at least partially taken care of.

As you may also know, I don't typically read outside reviews for products I intend to review myself. And while I have so far avoided doing so with the Pixel 8 Pro, I did of course notice the earliest reviews dropping yesterday. And it was in this notably short list of write-ups that I noticed something that I find both stupid and undeserving of attention: Instead of actually reviewing the new phones Google just gave them, the traditional, mainstream reviewers---meaning those that write for newspapers, not bloggers or YouTubers---chose to focus on the handsets' new AI-based computational photography features.

And they got it completely wrong. They are voicing their alleged concerns about Google's ability to change history or alter their memories as if editing a snapshot is somehow akin to literally going back in time and impacting world events. What if Hitler was never born? Because of the Pixel 8?

And when I say they're getting it completely wrong, I mean it on every level. No one---and I mean literally almost no one---is going to sit there staring into a tiny smartphone screen and take the time to hand-edit all of the photos they take. Or most of the photos they take. Or even some of the photos they take.

Instead, most will likely just experiment with this feature briefly and then move on. And maybe, just maybe, use these features every once in a while, when a particularly important photo---a group family shot, perhaps---is just a little off because someone blinked or isn't smiling or whatever.

Put another way, like the incredible photo editing features that existed in Google Photos before today, these features are useful but rarely needed, the type of thing you're happy to have when you do see an issue in a photo. What most really want from a smartphone camera---wait for it---is for it to just take the best possible photos all the time. Not to hand-edit photos.

And, sure, these AI features also make for great demos, as anyone who watched the recent Made by Google event can tell you. But what they are not is the end of the world, a signal of some coming AI apocalypse in which the lines between reality and fantasy are forever blurred and we stumble around in the darkness, confused about this new hellscape in which nothing makes sense anymore.

And seriously. Let's not forget that we have far more pressing ethical and antitrust is...