The really funny part about The Matrix is that it got the future backwards. Rather than subject humans to an artificial reality by moving their every conscious moment into a simulated, computer-generated world, the actual future opens up more and more of the real world to the computers, which create artificial simulations and import them into our real world.
The end result is more or less the same. People have a harder and harder time distinguishing reality from simulation. Take Google’s latest announcement, for example. All your phone needs to create a six-second video is for you to tap a button on a photograph in your Google Photos app.
It’s beyond trippy to watch a video of yourself, looking like you and in a location you definitely were, acting and moving in a realistic, convincing way across the screen, doing something you never actually did.
expanded access
This isn’t the first time Google has brought out an ability for its Gemini AI to create videos from still images. The feature has already been available in the Gemini app directly. It’s also coming to YouTube Shorts sometime later this summer.
Given that the new photo-to-video feature will come to everybody on Android and iOS who have Google Photos downloaded (iOS devices use Apple’s own photo app as their default), the latest move opens up access to virtually everybody with a cell phone in the US—unless, perhaps, you’re using a dumb phone.
“As we bring features like Photo to video and Remix to people, we know it’s important to do so responsibly, providing transparency when images are created or edited using our photo and video generation tools,” said Google in its July 23 announcement.
“All videos and photos generated with Photo to video and Remix will include an invisible SynthID digital watermark — just like images edited using Reimagine in Photos. Videos generated in Photos will also include a visual watermark for added transparency, similar to what you’ll see on videos generated in Gemini.”
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