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Google Photos AI tricks like Magic Eraser have just been opened up to all Google One subscribers, but now Google says it plans to take them to the next frontier: your videos.
In the company’s latest edition of Made by Google (opens in new tab) podcast, Senior Product Manager Zachary Senzer talks about how using AI to automatically edit videos, in a similar way to existing tools like Photo Unblur and Magic Eraser, is the next step for Google Photos. And that despite the challenges, “there are many exciting things on the way” for those who shoot both motion graphics and stills.
While Google isn’t ready to share details just yet, Senzer said that while the recent focus has been “on the photo side, I’m personally really looking forward to doing more with videos.” Via Google Photos and YouTube, he added that Google has seen “people capture and create a lot more videos than ever before” and that “there’s so much potential in the space to really revolutionize what people can do with their videos doing”.
Exactly how Google intends to do this isn’t yet clear, but Google just brought its HDR effect feature (below) to videos – and the likes of Photo Unblur and Magic Eraser give us a good lead. The latter would certainly be an incredible video feature, while automated cuts and convincing video bokeh (in a similar way to portrait modes) could both drastically reduce editing time and improve overall brilliance.
The reason we haven’t seen those features is the sheer amount of processing power required to apply local edits to videos compared to photos. As podcast host Rachid Finge points out, “most videos have 30 frames per second, so it must be at least 30 times harder to do that”. Zachary Senzer agrees that it’s “definitely more difficult,” but says there are many “exciting” video-related features along the way.
Like Google’s photo-related AI features, it’s likely these will initially be limited to Pixel phones with Google’s Tensor chip. Senzer says that for the Google Pixel 6 and Google Pixel 7, we “worked very closely with our AI researchers at Google to create machine learning models that work well on Tensor.”
Given the much higher demands of video editing, so would probably be the case for future editing tricks – but the recent spread of Magic Eraser and Photo Unblur to all Google One devices shows that automated video editing in Google Photos could eventually be available on no video editing tools. -Pixel phones too.
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While some of today’s top video-editing apps, such as Adobe Premiere Rush, Lumafusion, and GoPro Quik, offer some automated video-editing features, they don’t have the scale of Google Photos — or offer much the same one-touch usability as photo tricks like Magic Eraser .
Google was eager to talk about its role as a democratizer of simple editing, for both photos and videos, in its Made by Google podcast, with Zachary Senzer stating that it wants to make sure every “ordinary person can go in and take those really great photos.” and videos in just a tap without that expertise required”.
But while it certainly sounds like Google will be bringing video editing tricks to Google Photos and Pixel phones in the near future, it’s not the only company excited about the potential of computational video.
Last year, Adobe’s VP and Fellow Marc Levoy — who previously pioneered Google’s computational photography modes for Pixel phones — said computational video would become the next big image feature, adding that “for every magical new photographic experience companies have introduced to smartphones, there are is an analog function one can imagine for video”.
Levoy also strongly hinted that Adobe would enter the mobile video recording space as well. “Adobe has created the most powerful video editing software apps in the industry (primarily Premiere and After Effects), but has so far been reluctant to enter the video recording space,” he said. “As mobile cameras get better, this will be a natural next step,” added Levoy.
So whether it’s at Google I/O 2023 in May or Adobe Max 2023 later in the year, expect video to be the next big focus for AI-powered editing tools.
