Improve Photos with Pixel’s AI Camera Technology - Google Store

“Early camera phones were all about doing old-school optics right,” says Alexei Efros, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley teaching computational photography. “Better and bigger lenses, and so on. They missed the boat on this idea that cameras should be more than physical-optical machines.” Most of the improvements now, Efros adds, “can all be done in a cell phone, in software.”

An AI camera relies on special software to give users the ability to snap images that previously only high-end cameras were able to capture. For example, HDR+ technology can snap a dozen or more pictures in rapid succession, then use AI software to align and combine them into a single image free of any blur from camera shake. 

Similarly, the AI software in Pixel phones can fix the exposure challenges of taking photos in high-contrast situations, where shadows typically make one part of the image look dark and bright light makes another part look washed out. It can process multiple images to capture visual details otherwise lost to shadows and reduce the overexposure of bright sections.

“All of this is extended down to the average cell phone user,” Efros says. “Anyone can be a creator.”

Intelligent tone mapping. This feature automatically accounts for different light levels in various parts of an image – foreground, subject, background – and sets the exposure appropriately for each area.

Efros says that AI camera technology has made phone cameras so good, many professional photographers tell him pictures taken by a modern AI camera smartphone are better than those from an expensive, pro-grade DSLR. “AI gives the artist more and better tools to work with,” he says.