On Wednesday, the tech giant announced that a handful of enhanced editing features previously limited to Pixel devices and paid subscribers — including its AI-powered Magic Editor — will now make their way to all Google Photos users for free.
But with the growing number of AI-powered editing tools flooding the market, Google has decided to make its set of AI photo editing features available to more people for free.
Previously, these kinds of edits would require Magic Eraser and other professional editing tools, like Photoshop, to get the same effect.
With the expansion, Magic Editor will come to all Pixel devices, while iOS and Android users (whose phones meet the requirements) will get 10 Magic Editor saves per month.
The other tools will be available to all Google Photos users, no Google One subscription is required.
After frenzied speculation that a recent photo of Kate Middleton and her children was AI generated, the Duchess of Cambridge herself had to address the controversy.
It’s an appropriate amount of hands — eight hands for four people — but they all look a bit off.
So when official Royal Family accounts published the suspicious-looking photo of Kate and her children, the internet had a field day.
Even British celebrities like Piers Morgan have weighed in, raising the question of why the Royal Family won’t quash the conspiracy theories by just releasing the unedited photo.
It’s a good thing that the public was so skeptical about Middleton’s sketchy photo, since she admitted that it was edited.
PhotoRoom — a startup out of Paris, France — has built a popular AI-based image editing app and API targeting e-commerce vendors, media specialists, and others.
Multiple sources say that the startup is raising between $50 million and $60 million on a pre-money valuation of between $500 million and $600 million.
PhotoRoom, and Matthieu Rouif, the CEO who co-founded PhotoRoom with CTO Eliot Andres, declined to comment on any funding-related questions.
Adding all this together, since its last round in 2022, when it raised $19 million, PhotoRoom has been blowing up.
Most categories of apps, she wrote, are still up for grabs; and within the popular area of AI image-based tools, apps like PhotoRoom, in her opinion, have a shot at success.
Instagram introduced its generative AI-powered background editing tool to U.S.-based users Wednesday.
Meta’s lead for generative AI Ahmad Al-Dahle posted on Threads saying that the tool will let users change the background to their images through prompts for Stories.
Earlier this week, Snapchat released a new tool for its paying users that let them create and send AI-generated images.
Earlier this year, the social network rolled out the ability for Snapchat+ users to populate prompt-based backgrounds.
At the same time, the company also launched a standalone AI-image generator called Imagine with Meta, powered by its own model called Emu.
