Google Photos is getting an AI upgrade. The tech giant announced Wednesday that several enhanced editing features (including the AI-powered Magic Editor) that were previously limited to Pixel devices and paid members will now be available for free to all Google Photos users. . The extension also includes Google's Magic Eraser, which removes unwanted items from your photos. Photo Unblur uses machine learning to sharpen blurry photos. Portrait light, etc. that allows you to change the light source of a photo after the fact.
Editing tools have long been a selling point for Google's high-end Pixel smartphones, as well as Google One, the company's cloud storage subscription product. But as AI-powered editing tools flood the market, Google has decided to make its AI photo editing feature set available to more people for free.
However, there are some caveats to this expansion.
First, the tool will start rolling out on May 15th, but it will take a few weeks before it's available to all Google Photos users.
Additionally, there are some hardware device requirements to use them. For example, for ChromeOS, your device must be a Chromebook Plus with ChromeOS version 118 or later, or at least 3 GB of RAM. On mobile, devices must run Android 8.0 or later or iOS 15 or later.
The company says Pixel tablets will also be supported.
Magic Editor is the most notable feature of this group. Introduced last year to coincide with the launch of Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, this editing tool uses generative AI to fill in gaps in photos, reposition subjects, and make other edits to the foreground and background of photos, among other things. , perform more complex photo editing. photograph. With Magic Editor, you can change a gray sky to blue, remove people from the background of a photo, center the subject of a photo while filling in gaps, and remove other unnecessary objects. I can.
Previously, this type of editing required other professional editing tools such as Magic Eraser or Photoshop to achieve the same effect. And those edits will be more manual rather than automated by AI.
This expansion brings Magic Editor to all Pixel devices, and allows iOS and Android users (if their phone meets the requirements) to save 10 Magic Editors each month. . To go beyond that, you'll need to buy a premium Google One plan, meaning 2TB or more of storage.
Other tools are available to all Google Photos users and do not require a Google One subscription. The complete feature set that will be available includes Magic Eraser, Photo Unblur, Sky Suggestion, Color Pop, HDR Effects for Photos and Videos, Portrait Blur, Portrait Light (plus the Light/Balance Light feature in the tool ), including cinematics. Photo, collage editor styles, and video effects.
Other features, like AI-powered Best Take (which combines similar photos to create one best shot with everyone smiling), will continue to be available only on Pixel 8 and 8 Pro.