The New AI Photo Tricks on the Pixel 8 Are Blowing My Mind

In all my years of reviewing personal technology gadgets, I can count the number of times my jaw has dropped when learning about a new product. It’s good to be a skeptical journalist! But I failed to maintain that detachment when Google demoed a few imaging tricks on its new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro smartphones. 

Taken in a vacuum, these features are things anyone with knowledge of Photoshop or video editing software can execute. But the new Pixel phones make them accessible to everyone, which is exciting, and frankly a little scary. Let’s go through ’em. 

Magic Editor

Google teased this feature during its developer conference in May. It’s the natural evolution of Magic Eraser, which Google debuted a few years ago. The latter lets you erase unwanted objects in your photo, like a fire hydrant or a person in the background. Magic Editor can warp the whole photo to a new level.

In a demo, Google showed a picture of a girl running on a beach. With Magic Editor in the Google Photos app, a spokesperson pressed on the subject and the software accurately made a cutout. They were then able to move the subject anywhere in the scene, and the software filled in the space left behind with what it thought should be there. These were photos picked by Google, of course, but Magic Editor filled them in with great accuracy. 

Magic Editor also enabled the option to change the scene’s lighting. If you take a photo at noon with harsh lighting, you can easily change it to golden hour to get those wonderfully warm evening tones—and maybe even throw in a sunset!  

In another photo, a kid about to shoot a basketball from the ground. The spokesperson grabbed the subject in the photo, dragged him up into the air to make it look like he was about to dunk, and then casually said, “You can move their shadow too!”