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At the Samsung conference on February 25th Galaxy Unpacked eventthe company showed off new Galaxy AI features, including Call screening and Camera upgrades. But what caught my attention the most were the AI-driven photo editing features, like Photo Assist.
“It doesn’t just allow you to remove what was there,” said Mason Page, of Samsung’s product marketing team. “It helps you add something He should “I was there.”
Don’t like the clothes you were wearing in this photo? Let Galaxy AI change your fitness! I wish your dog was here in this café with you? Show your corgi through the power of artificial intelligence!
You are no longer limited to removing unwanted elements in your photos. You can now adjust larger aspects of the same images.
It’s tempting, easy and completely inauthentic.
Look, I get it. Sometimes you just want to fix the image. When I got engaged two years ago, the only image my now-wife and I had of the proposal was of me asking her to marry me while a stranger stood uncomfortably close to us — interrupting and intruding on our private moment. We tried every simple AI-powered erase tool to remove the stranger from the photo, but nothing really worked.
But AI-powered photo and video editing tools aren’t harmful. Grok was behind An estimated millions of unwanted photos and videoswhich ultimately leads to Investigation in the European Union. Scammers resort to photos of celebrities to enhance their abilities Scams generated by artificial intelligenceAnd there is an ocean of AI slope The Internet is drowning. The expansion of AI tools and capabilities makes it ever easier to use AI to cause harm.
Offering the ability to add big features with AI is a different story than just erasing the small details. What particularly concerns me is how these tools interact with social media — specifically, how they seem poised to amplify existing issues around mental health and self-image.
Sure, the dog is cute, but he wasn’t in that café.
The endless pursuit of unrealistic expectations
One problem with social media is that it can implicitly promote a highly curated picture of someone’s life, focused almost exclusively on positive experiences. A post about a big event or fun trip might spark a wave of likes and positive comments, which might tempt a person to be more selective and only post about the most important events in their life.
A Study 2023 from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany I looked at the relationship between photo editing and self-esteem on social media. “The depiction of reality is not usually a documentary but part of a story that the photo editor intends to bring to the public screen,” the authors write.
The gap between reality and expectations can greatly affect young people.
A 2024 Study at the University of Europe de Madrid Examining the relationship between social media use and physical measures of self-esteem. “The blurring of lines between reality and digitally augmented imaging leads individuals to set unrealistic expectations for their bodies and lifestyles,” the researchers wrote. “The impact is particularly evident among teens and young adults who are most vulnerable to the influences of social media and are at a critical developmental stage regarding self-identity and body image.”
The gap between a social post and reality can be very blurry with basic tools like filters and the good old process of taking a million photos in pursuit of that one “perfect” shot. But examples of Galaxy AI changing or adding key elements raise the risk of distinguishing reality from fabrication.
It’s one thing to wonder how many selfies someone took before they found the most flattering angle. It’s quite another thing to wonder if that person owns the outfit he or she is wearing. While it is not inherently harmful for someone to switch their clothing style in a photo, the availability of these tools invites a situation in which everyone competes to create an “impossibly” better and more impressive photo.
But the companies behind these tools aren’t talking about the consequences. (Samsung couldn’t even bother mentioning AI When she talked about her environmental initiatives.) However, when it comes to young people trying to navigate online versus offline perfection, the consequences matter.
“The insurmountable gap between the true self and polished images online fosters feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness,” the researchers at the Universidad Europea de Madrid wrote.
The world, and the Internet in particular, is already effective in stoking these feelings. The easier we make it for people to make drastic changes to images, the more they will feel unable to live up to expectations that have no basis in reality. It’s already a problem, and new tools and features are only going to make it worse.
What is the solution?
Parents who can talk to teens about social media use and set sustainable limits may be able to mitigate the negative aspects.
American Psychological Association Reported in 2023 “Teens and young adults who reduced their social media use by 50% for just a few weeks saw significant improvements in how they felt about their weight and overall appearance,” compared to their peers who continued their normal social media use.
The bigger battle is combating the thoughts and behaviors behind those unattainable standards.
“Fostering a digital environment that values authenticity over perfection, and well-being over appearance, is crucial to mitigate the negative effects of self-presentation on social media,” researchers from the University of Europe in Madrid wrote.
Eventually, my wife and I gave up trying to delete the stranger’s photo from our engagement photo. Their presence was unwelcome and distracting, but it was also part of the moment — a moment we try to laugh about now. We have professional photos from our final wedding, which fortunately was good and free of strangers.
But the proposed image captures the real story of that day: the real mix of joy and strangeness from that moment, something that AI tools cannot generate.