The Pixel 9's top camera feature makes me very uncomfortable | Digital Trends (2024)

I don’t think I will ever use Google’s Add Me photo mode in real life. I can say this with a degree of certainty as I have yet to find a situation where I’ve needed or wanted to use Google’s Best Take, the last AI camera feature Google introduced designed for group shots of people.

The reasons are both practical and personal. The fact that I’m thinking so deeply about these AI features and my own life makes me uncomfortable — and shows there’s a serious problem with how Google is advertising the Google Pixel 9’s cameras.

It’s not the technology

In case you missed it, Add Me is a camera mode that ensures no one is left out of a group photo. It works by taking a group photo and the photographer then swapping places with someone in the shot, who takes a second photo, ready for Google’s AI to stitch them together into one complete image with everyone present.

Best Take worked some face-swapping magic to ensure everyone in a group shot was making the right expression for the photo and relied on multiple frames being taken at the time or on previous images of the person from your Google Photos library to work.Again, it uses Google’s AI to match and stitch the “new” face into the photo.

Both of these features are very clever indeed, demonstrating how AI can enhance and change our photographs and the power of Google’s visual search. They’re also amazing marketing tools as, to demonstrate both, you need a group of happy people all clamoring to take a group photo to commemorate whatever occasion is being celebrated. I fear this marketing value is being placed above what made me love the Pixel phone’s camera before, and it’s leading us down a problematic path.

Is everyone but me taking group photos?

I think the technology is interesting, but like so many other “creative” AI camera modes, I don’t know how often, if ever, I’ll actually use Add Me. The trouble is, I don’t live in the world being advertised by Google. Add Me and Best Take sell the assumption that we’re all out there in situations where taking many group photos is part of the fun. Although it’s painful to admit, I rarely find myself with more than three people (the usual definition of a group of people) at a time when I would feel the need to say, “Let’s take a group photo!”

While I accept that many people may do, I wonder how often it really happens, and if it does, whether Add Me is worth the trouble. Add Me looks like a bit of a faff and another surefire way to kill spontaneity as you all jostle for position and camera duties, potentially in an environment that’s busy or constantly changing, thus likely making it hard for the AI to re-create the scene. It’s also not capturing the moment itself but a period of time. The moment would have passed during all the messing around. A long-arm selfie may not look quite so polished, but at least it’s instant and a lot less embarrassing.

But the slickness of Google’s Add Me advert and the way it’s promoting these lifestyle-based image and AI tools makes me wonder if I am in the minority here. Is there something wrong with me and my small group of friends? Do I not have enough friends, and therefore, won’t or can’t enjoy the Pixel 9 to the fullest? Is my life boring and ordinary compared to everyone else’s? Google’s lifestyle-driven advertising is so heavy-handed it raises these questions, and I don’t like that direction at all.

The advertising problem

In a feature published by the Harvard Business Review with the headline “Advertising makes us unhappy,” Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Warwick, said:

“[Marketing’s] line is that advertising is trying to expose the public to new and exciting things to buy, and their task is to simply provide information, and in that way they raise human well-being. But the alternative argument is that exposing people to a lot of advertising raises their aspirations—and makes them feel that their own lives, achievements, belongings, and experiences are inadequate.”

I admit that the constant adverts for Best Take when the Pixel 8 came out made me feel like my own life was uncomfortably bereft of opportunities to use the feature, and I don’t think any broader campaign around Add Me will be any different. What I find troubling about Google’s most hyped camera AI features is they require you to be a highly social animal. If you aren’t, then they offer little value.

A smartphone camera feature and its use should not prompt such reflection.

Let’s take a step back at this point. A smartphone camera feature and its use should not prompt such reflection or raise personal, almost existential concerns. Yet these fleeting thoughts all arrive when I see the ads because Google has decided to lean heavily on Gemini AI and tools like Add Me and Best Take to sell the Pixel 9 series phones. These highly technical, deeply situation-specific features were never needed to sell Pixel cameras in the past, though.

Google has forgotten why we love Pixel cameras

I understand adverts have to sell new features in an attention-grabbing way. I’m also sure that some people reading this will have immediately seen how Add Me will fit into their lives. Still, in the same way Google lost its way during the launch of the Pixel 9 phones, it has become so bogged down by Gemini and telling us how amazing its AI tools are, it has entirely forgotten why we keen photographers always want the latest Pixel phone in the first place: It’s the camera and the photos it takes.

The Pixel has always been the camera to have if you want to be sure of a great photo in almost any environment. Reliable yet never lacking in charm or personality, the camera has long been the standard for lowlight photography. It has consistently impressed when put against its peers, regardless of the device’s generation. Some of the photos I’m most proud of have been taken with a Pixel phone. Perhaps the Pixel 9’s camera isn’t that good, so Google isn’t keen to lavish its overall ability with advertising attention, or is it simply resting on its laurels, trading on past goodwill? I’d be shocked if that were the case, but Google’s marketing approach to the Pixel 9’s camera doesn’t do much to quell that concern.

I’m questioning all of this — from my own lifestyle to the Pixel 9’s camera quality — because I’m being force-fed Add Me, Best Take, and the majority of Gemini’s other gimmicks as the sole reason to buy a Pixel this year. It all has its place, but it should not take precedence over why so many of us have gravitated toward a Pixel phone’s camera before — the fact it has always taken fabulous photos. If all I see is Add Me in relation to the Pixel 9’s camera, I’m going to quickly think that’s what makes it unique and that Google has lost its photographic edge. I wouldn’t buy a phone for a feature I’d never use, and I have a feeling I won’t be alone in thinking all this.

For years, we have loved the Pixel’s camera because it consistently got the fundamentals exactly right and, unlike many competing Android phones, didn’t resort to gimmicks. The tables have seemingly turned, at least in marketing land, and I fear the Pixel 9’s camera is being undersold because of it.