The Google Clips Camera Puts AI Behind the Lens (theverge.com) 150
The Verge's Dieter Bohn reviews Google's AI camera, dubbed "Clips," which was announced alongside the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. Here's an excerpt: You know what a digital camera is. It's a lens and a sensor, with a display to see what you're looking at, and a button to take the picture. Google Clips is a camera, but it only has some of those parts. There's no display. There's a shutter button, but it's completely optional to use. Instead, it takes pictures for you, using machine learning to recognize and learn faces and look for interesting moments to record. I don't know if parents -- Google's target market -- will want it. I don't know if Google can find a way to explain everything it is (and isn't) to a broad enough audience to sell the thing in big numbers, especially at $249. I also don't know what the release date will be, beyond that it will be "coming soon." But I do know that it's the most fascinating camera I've used in a very long time.
More ways to mine your privacy! (Score:2, Insightful)
It puts AI behind the lens, and your data in China.
And Poland.
And Uzbekistan.
And Uruguay.
Re:More ways to mine your privacy! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's okay. As long as the data is kept out of reach of the American three letter agencies, I feel better. Those are the ones with an ability to harm me, and an incentive to justify their existence.
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That data is only used by people who have a financial incentive to manipulate you into spending money on things via targeted ads.
Unlike a TLA which presumably has real problems to keep them busy. Also, unlike a TLA, Google cannot just resort to having men in dark suits whisk you off to GitMo if they cannot get your data any other way.
Also, frankly, I've never heard of anyone being
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Do you really actually think that anyone cares about anything you do? Youâ(TM)re just a standard run of the mill worker drone with absolutely nothing interesting about you that would make any agency three letter or otherwise want to waste any resources looking at you.
Are you literally retarded or do you work for the government? - Not that theres a much of a difference :)
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Do you really actually think that anyone cares about anything you do?
If they don't care, then why do they put so much time and effort into spying?
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Do you really actually think that anyone cares about anything you do?
You seem to have a delusion that they only do targeted surveillance, and not Elmer Fudd duck hunting. They target the sky, and if you happen to fly by, you risk getting hit even if they didn't aim for you.
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It's a valid point.
While I am concerned about all spying, I am much less concerned about foreign powers spying on me than domestic ones. Foreign powers are much less able to do me harm that domestic powers.
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Really? Much as I don't trust the NSA, I find it unlikely they are going to vote for me or siphon off my money from my bank accounts.
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Perhaps not, but how much do you trust the people they are supplying that information to?
Siphoning my bank account isn't one of my worries. That's a pretty easy problem to mitigate.
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Why do you think I didn't read that? I did, but there's two points to be made here:
First, I'm not going to believe it just because they said it. That claim needs to be tested and verified.
Second, that can change at any time.
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Everyone should RTFA. The AI runs in the camera, the data inside is encrypted, only leaves the camera via your phone, and only reaches the net if you upload it.
Only reaches the net if some nincompoop who has one uploads it.
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Or never give your real account details to anybody, and don't store them in your computer or mobile devices.
Use prepaid debit cards for those times when you want or need to use a card, so that any loss will be limited to just however much you loaded onto the card. Some credit card companies allow you to easily create one-time-use "virtual cards" for security purposes. If yours is one of those, use that service.
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You know that the NSA has full license to spy on data abroad, right?
That does not imply ability. Secret court orders has no compelling power outside US jurisdiction.
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You didn't actually read the article, did you?
The first is that everything on Clips happens locally. Nothing is synced with Google's cloud at all — except the photos you save into Google Photos. All the facial recognition happens on the device using its own processing power. None of it is paired up with whatever facial recognition you may have set up in Google Photos. It doesn't pair faces with names, it just recognizes faces it sees a bunch over time...
The clips the camera takes are also stored only on the camera itself. They don't try to sync over to your phone unless you ask for them. They're also encrypted on the camera, in case you lose it.
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What "your data". The AI took the picture, not you. So you don't even have a copyright claim to that data.
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So you don't even have a copyright claim to that data.
Of course you have.
I suggest you read the relevant laws.
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Wow, nice assertion. Where's the case law or example. If PETA can get an ape to own the copyright on the picture it took, instead of the photographer, why don't you think this would be in the same boat?
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PETA did nothing of the sort and had to drop the case. The only thing PETA accomplished was to remove copyright since the picture in the case was not taken by a human.
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Boom. That copyright was removed because the picture was not taken by a human. These pictures are taken by a computer. That's kinda the point I was making.
Yes, I overstated the precedent. But it actually does prove my point.
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Removing the copyright a human claimed to have, does not grant anyone else the copyright.
So: it does not prove your point.
Computer algorithms can not gain copyright on the creations they make: it is written like this in the law.
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Neither can the person claim a copyright on the creations of an algorithm. I doubt Google really cares about the copyright of your pictures. But they really don't want someone else to own them. Otherwise, they might not be able to use them however they like.
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Because copyright law excludes explicitly automatic generated "works" from being copyrightable. E.g. music generated by an algorithm can not be copyrighted, and most certainly not "by the algorithm" ... you perhaps could construct a case that the inventor/author of the algorithm has the copyright.
In this case not even the owner of the camera would have the copyright.
But I guess, Case Law will later agree that the copyright is with the owner of the camera.
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I don't see how the owner of the device will have the copyright.Google will have a vested interest in saying that as the author of the algorithm, they own all the pictures.
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In the US .... perhaps.
But tat are only 330M people on a 7B planet ...
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This has to be the lamest attempt at astro-turfing I've seen in a while.
the hell!? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh come on! COME ON!
It's bad enough that even on hacked phones, we don't have access to the firmwares. And that we have no idea, 100% idea if the NSA/etc can exploit vulnerabilities to take pics even on a clean phone.
Even outside of that, on 'normal' phones, no doubt 1/2 the malware on Google Play is the CIA.
But no. That's not enough.
Now people are going to willingly walk around with devices that take pics of everything they do. What the hell man!
#_$)#@+_$)@#_+$)@#+$)@+_#)$+_
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we have no idea, 100% idea if the NSA/etc can exploit vulnerabilities to take pics even on a clean phone.
With this, NSA can just stream the images from Google. Don't even need to bother to hack any of the cameras, the fools will buy the cameras and pay for the bandwidth to stream images backs to Google and thus NSA.
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Unless you think Google is straight up lying about it, this camera uploads nothing to Google.
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I doubt they're lying, but it seems risky to assume they aren't.
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It sounds like it can't even connect to the internet. Rather it is a wifi hotspot and you connect your phone to the camera to download photos. Presumably some security researcher will check it out and make sure it can't do anything it's not supposed to.
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Presumably some security researcher will check it out and make sure it can't do anything it's not supposed to.
Correct. This would count as "not taking their word for it.". But it's also entering into territory that's a real hassle -- you can't just test once and be done done with it, you have to test frequently -- or at the very least, you have to retest every time the operating system or relevant apps update.
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If it can't connect to the internet, you can just not update it.
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For the device itself, yes, but I'm assuming that there's software on the phone itself that is involved as well. The fact that the device doesn't directly connect to the internet doesn't mean much when the phone can.
You could avoid updating that too, of course. I'm in no way saying that this is an unmanageable security situation.
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Well of course the phone can upload photos to the web, but that is nothing new and has nothing to do with the camera. Whether or not you're OK with your phone's capabilities and security limitations, nothing will change if you decide to use this camera too. You'll just have more photos.
Re:the hell!? (Score:4, Funny)
Speak for yourself. I want better lifelogging; I find the current state of lifelogging apps, like Sony's "Lifelogger", quite poor. I'd love an app that logs *everything* I do, from as many sensors as it can, constrained only by realistic storage / bandwidth constraints. If something like this could be built into my cellphone or a cheap cell accessory, that would be awesome.
The main problem with it being simply an app on a cell phone is that cells have only front and rear cameras, but for a cell in your pocket what you really want is a side camera (which nobody has). But I can picture solutions for that problem...
Re:the hell!? (Score:4)
Speak for yourself. I want better lifelogging; I find the current state of lifelogging apps, like Sony's "Lifelogger", quite poor. I'd love an app that logs *everything* I do, from as many sensors as it can, constrained only by realistic storage / bandwidth constraints. If something like this could be built into my cellphone or a cheap cell accessory, that would be awesome.
The main problem with it being simply an app on a cell phone is that cells have only front and rear cameras, but for a cell in your pocket what you really want is a side camera (which nobody has). But I can picture solutions for that problem...
Please understand that while you may want to record *everything* you do, the rest of us do not, nor do we want to be included.
And to clarify, the main problem we have here is technology like this bullshit does not leave us with a fucking choice to NOT participate. I have enough cameras and invasion of privacy going on right now, paid for by my taxes. I sure as shit don't need more.
And right now, I can't "picture" a solution to solve for the endless amount of narcissists invading society that seek to destroy the concept of privacy altogether.
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Hahaha, so true! ;)
I started using it as a replacement for Latitude when Latitude went away, but the software has gone way downhill since then (wish I could revert to an old version). Now it's all about (poor) calorie counts and sleep tracking. The map that you used to be able to have on your timeline with precise positioning is now hidden, no longer on the timeline, and only moves you in big blocks, with a more awkward interface. The timeline shows you "browsing" and "phone call" and the like, but you can
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So he can bore the world with the minute details of his insignificant life on an unprecedented level.
Back when I was a kid, relatives bored you out of your skull with carousels and carousels of their holiday slides. The internet changed that, now it's easier than ever to tell them you're going to watch it at home while ignoring them altogether.
Didn't stop anyone from taking those slides, though, in the vain delusion that anyone but they themselves actually wanted to see those pictures.
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There are medical uses for devices like this too. Some people with memory problems (particularly the elderly) find it helpful to wear a camera that takes a photo every few minutes. Then if they can't remember if they did X, they can review the photos.
Of course most people just want to spam Facebook. One of the examples they give is baby photos... If anything, we should be discouraging parents from putting their children's entire childhoods online.
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Hey, that's actually a good idea.
One of my concerns whenever I leave my apartment is whether I locked the door. Many days I turn back to see whether I did actually lock the door. Invariably, I did. Doesn't really help that I, so far, never ever left the door unlocked. That nagging feeling that I just might have not locked it this one time is always present. And yes, of course I remember that I locked the door. But was that today? Or is it an older memory? But I could take a picture of the locked door as a r
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I guess you could train the AI to recognize important events rather than just photogenic ones. Maybe put some kind of sensor in it so that it knows when you pass through doorways.
Alternatively you could buy an internet connected smart lock. Not because it will let you check the state of the lock remotely, they are too unreliable for that, but at least you can stop worrying because it doesn't really matter if you locked it or not any more.
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You can tell from the outside if your door is locked?
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Most apartments have an air gap the size of Texas in the door frame, because the owners don't pay the heating bills. It's easy to see whether the deadbolt is in place at a glance.
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No, but I can make sure that the door is locked when I stand in front of it and only take a picture of the door when I know that it is locked.
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Right up there with fretting over what other people are doing with their lives
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Re:the hell!? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) I love datasets. If I decide later that I want to, say, check how long it usually takes me to drive from Point A to Point B, or see if I noticed an earthquake on a particular day or really bloody anything I think up later, I want the data.
2) I like being able to look up things about my past. E.g., a coworker says "Oh, hey, I don't see you signed in on July 6th - do you know why?" I can go back and see "Oh yeah, I was sick then" or "I was in, but I was in a rush because of A and B and forgot to sign in" or "Oh yeah, I took a day of vacation then, did the vacation registration not go through?"
3) Sometimes my memory isn't great. It's great to have an "artificial memory" that never forgets
4) The inevitable "He said" / "she said" argument. You have proof right on-hand. Prove it to yourself first, and if you're right, prove it to the other person.
5) Contextualizing the past. Why do people take pictures or videos of major events? To remember and revisit them later. Why not have as much data as you can for those past events?
6) Rescue. If your phone logs everything to the cloud, and you have it set up so that friends or family members can access it in an emergency, it makes it a lot more likely that you'll be found.
7) Crime. I used to be on Google Latitude, but there was a couple month period in which I was using a phone in which it wasn't enabled, and during that period I was a victim of a crime in a place I wasn't familiar with. It was extreme difficult for me to find the location where it occurred. Full logging would not only have recorded the location, but also all of the details to prove its existence.
And on and on and on.
What I don't understand is why so many of you are afraid of logging yourselves. What the heck are you doing that you're so terrified of governments hacking into your data and stealing it?
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4) The inevitable "He said" / "she said" argument. You have proof right on-hand. Prove it to yourself first, and if you're right, prove it to the other person.
Yeah, that always works well with the Mrs ...
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What I don't understand is why so many of you are afraid of logging yourselves.
I'm not, broadly speaking, but it is of rather limited utility to me.
However, I certainly am afraid of using any third-party application or online service to do it. I can't trust any of those companies. It might be true that most of them are OK, but it's also true that it's pretty damned hard to tell which ones are OK and which ones aren't.
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I'll repeat: What the heck are you doing that you're so terrified of being subpoenaed and having something damning about you in your data?
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So you leave your doors open and unlocked and your windows uncovered for every moment of the day? If not, what are you doing to be terrified not to do so?
Does this help explain why your comment is dumb as shit?
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I'm sorry, I was completely unaware that the occurence of crime is based on whether or not one is engaged in criminal activity themselves.
"Dumb as shit" is talking about being prosecuted and being a crime victim as if they're at all related to the same things.
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I'll repeat: What the heck are you doing that you're so terrified of being subpoenaed and having something damning about you in your data?
You don't have to be doing anything wrong, or to have incriminating data, in order to be very cautious about law enforcement in the US. It is often capricious, wrong, and damaging to innocent people.
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> What I don't understand is why so many of you are afraid of logging yourselves. What the heck are you doing that you're so terrified of governments hacking into your data and stealing it?
Quit trolling. We aren't afraid of logging ourselves. So _you_ found a valid use for your data. Good for you. _Your_ usage scenario is not a "one-size-fits-all" solution. Namely:
"I don't want / need my data being data-mined / sold without my consent by some 3rd party who knows fuck-all about security."
If you never vol
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What the heck are you doing that you're so terrified of governments hacking into your data and stealing it?
In other words, "If you have nothing to hide...". This 23-page PDF does an excellent job at succinctly describing issues regarding privacy: http://tehlug.org/files/solove.pdf [tehlug.org]. It is most definitely worth the read as it does a great job discussing the "nothing to hide" argument.
The issue, at least for me, is the fact that the data has value. If it didn't, Google wouldn't be spending obscene amounts of time and money collecting, storing, and analyzing that data. If that data has value, then it should be treat
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2) I can go back and see "Oh yeah, I was sick then" or "I was in, but I was in a rush because of A and B and forgot to sign in" or "Oh yeah, I took a day of vacation then, did the vacation registration not go through?"
Or do what I do and say dunno, see ya later. I actually prefer to be able to forget.
4) The inevitable "He said" / "she said" argument. You have proof right on-hand.
I take it you're not married? Hint: you are always wrong regardless.
5) Contextualizing the past. Why do people take pictures or videos of major events? To remember and revisit them later. Why not have as much data as you can for those past events?
Efficiency mainly. When I'm 80, I won't have time to revisit 80 years of memories in real time. Even right now with easy video camera capability I very rarely take video because the time it takes to catalog and review it all. There is a tipping point where too much information is too much.
6) Rescue. If your phone logs everything to the cloud, and you have it set up so that friends or family members can access it in an emergency, it makes it a lot more likely that you'll be found.
Not a problem I face on a day to say basis.
7) Crime. I was a victim of a crime in a place I wasn't familiar with.
Also an extremely rare pro
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Personally I'm going to start decorating my jacket with high intensity LED IR strop lights and 2.4 and 5 ghz frequency jammer.
Google can take this 1984 crap and pound it squarely where the son doesn't shin.
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Personally identifying information.
Would be good if the algorithm... (Score:3, Interesting)
...could be tweaked!
Like if you're a single guy/gal to look out for people who might pique your interest...
Like if you're security conscious, look out for people (cars?) who are UN-familiar in your area...
Like if you're an artist/designer/fashion person, look for certain patterns, colors, STYLES (ok, that'll be hard).
Having a brain behind the camera that isn't yours (the brain not the camera) lends itself to all sorts of interesting possibilities. Maybe it could even be taught to look for certain patterns (like this person or this KIND of person comes by this spot under these circumstances/times). Might be useful for marketing (oops, maybe that's not a good thing) but definitely surveillance.
It would also be good if the camera could read (in addition to having geo-tagging). That way it might be more context aware. Oh, and how about hearing? That way it could learn more about its environment (and what people are saying). How about a speaker? That way it could interrogate its subjects. Hmm... with enough work, this camera could become sentient!
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> I do it with my pi and openalpr.
WTF? It never even occurred to me that a Pi could have enough juice to run ALPR, so of course I never bothered to look for an ALPR app for it... Everything I've seen that runs commercial plate recognition takes a fairly hefty desktop PC.
How effective is it on a Pi?
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>Most use-cases for ALPR dont need 'real-time' conversion.
I am actually unfamiliar with those cases - the two I know would be police (who want instant hits to act on), and parking lot access control, which also needs to be real time.
I suppose there's historical analysis of video, but in my parts we have privacy legislation to deal with that prevents you from collecting that stuff long term (if you're a government agency... things get vague and unenforced pretty quickly for private companies, but then the
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Having a brain behind the camera that isn't yours (the brain not the camera) lends itself to all sorts of interesting possibilities.
. . . hmmm . . . that reminds me of females comments on males who have another brain that is constantly out of control.
It would be interesting to see what photos that brain would snap.
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It would be interesting to see what photos that brain would snap.
We can get a pretty good idea already.
http://images.google.com/image... [google.com]
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Telescreen (Score:5, Interesting)
The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape.
Re:Telescreen (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Telescreen (Score:4, Insightful)
And just like with Brave New World, some people actually see the dystopian future as utopian.
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There is of course one big difference between modern devices and 1984. "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment." Now, there is a way. It's watched by machines 100% of the time, and saved 100% of the time in case a human ever needs to review it.
Does it have a nudity filter? (Score:2)
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There is a way to find the answer to at least the second question. It involves a hyperlink in the summary.
Why isn't this just an app for your phone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally I just have my camera snap 10 pics in a row when I push the button and I get pretty good shots. Not really that hard and doesn't warrant buying a special device.
Also not sure why this isn't just a phone app.
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Read the article for an example of photos that you could not have gotten that way.
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Also not sure why this isn't just a phone app. ...
Because you don't want your phone always to be empty when you want to make a call.
Because you still want to make nice random AI pictures while you use your phone
Etc.
But does the AI emulate a real user? (Score:4, Funny)
Can it also be used in concert halls, where all it records is a whited-out stage a few pixels wide against a totally dark background and a muffled sound because the user had their hand over the microphone.
if so, can I buy one, send it on holiday instead of going myself and then bore the bollocks off all and sundry by showing the photos to disinterested co-workers and claiming I had a wonderful time.
Cat photography (Score:3)
The Google Clips Camera Puts AI Behind the Lens (Score:3)
Unfortunately it needs natural intelligence in front of the lens, and that's not a given.
Automatic cameras? Another sci-fi precedent... (Score:3)
"A panaflex had only one urge: getting the shot. It would do anything to get the shot–take a ride on a copter, dangle from a boom, go over a waterfall in a barrel. Its unblinking eye ogled everything, and when it was ready, it shot film. Somewhere in its innards guncotton and camphor and other unlikely substances came together under considerable pressure to form a continuous strip of celluloid. That strip was coated with photoreactive chemicals to produce a full-color negative. The strip moved behind the panaflex’s eye and was exposed in discrete frames by a muscle-and-bone pull-down and shutter mechanism Edison would have recognized."
https://varley.net/excerpt/demon-coming-attractions/ [varley.net]
Google Body Cameras: 'Glasses', for the stupid (Score:2)
People wearing Google Glass found out real quickly that people have a humongous problem with being constantly watched by an always on camera going back to Google. So Google through they'd be clever and put that same technology into a stripped down always on decide that would still give them the most easily tractable data stream.
Personally if this is going to be a thing, then I'm about start walking around with IR strobe lights and frequency jamming devised that knock out both bands of wi-fi. Google can ta
Crippled by thinness (Score:2)
Reference to the Pixel scared me for a moment... (Score:2)
At first glance, I thought this steaming shitheap was going to be added to phones---with a disastrous effect on battery life.
Thankfully, it's being sold as a standalone product which everyone can safely ignore.
A handful of idiotic Youtubers will probably buy one, but we're fine as long as their fans don't follow suit.
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So what is the AI going to find "interesting"? (Score:2)
"I'm sorry, Dave. I just don't find that a police officer beating that [ black | hispanic | homeless ] person would make a very interesting photograph."
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A green epoxy board with black bugs on them and some golden jewelry.
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You could be out of toilet paper.
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