1984’s Winston Smith would recognize Google Pixel's Superbowl Commercial!
I take a LOT of pictures using various cameras including my iPhone, iPad, and several different digital cameras. Most are snapshots of family, friends, travel, nature, and lots of baby and child pictures. I try to keep them well organized using a variety of tools. I spend time before releasing them to various albums with editing tools, mostly via cropping or occasional color correction. I was therefore quite interested in the Google Pixel Superbowl commercial and its emphasis on it “magic eraser” tool which can be used to remove “unwanted” people from images.
Initially I thought, “Wow, that’s neat!” But, knowing how much time it takes to seriously edit collections of images — I’d say I keep less than half of those I take with one of my imaging devices — I wondered how much use this very clever tool will have in reality beyond being a great selling feature.
By the end of the commercial I had a somewhat chilling thought. This tool can certainly be used for good or ill. For example, I’ll bet that many of the insurrectionists who, goaded by Trump to attack the US Capitol on January 6, wished they had used such a tool before they posted their pictures on the internet!
Many people think of Orwell in terms of his descriptions of the political manipulation of language but he also mentions the alteration of images by 1984’s Ministry of Truth. That fictional organization would have found good use for such a Pixel tool as it “cleaned up” old photos showing party figures with now-disgraced companions.
Orwell would have been right at home seeing how terms such as “woke,” “conservative,” “populism,” and “fake news” have now had their meanings twisted politically. There’s no telling what will happen when tools such as Google Pixel’s “erasure” feature become widespread and universally used to alter reality, thus making it commonplace to suspect that even our eyes are lying to us!
Copyright (c) 2023 by Dennis D. McDonald