Allison Johnson, writing at The Verge, about the just-announced Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro’s take on mobile photography:
In its eight years of existence, Google Photos has shifted its official mission just once: from “home for all your photos and videos” to “home for all your memories,” says Google Photos VP Shimrit Ben-Yair.
That tagline switch starts to make a lot more sense when you look at the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro. Inside the new phones, Google Photos will see some of its biggest changes to date, all designed to refine your memories. There’s a lot to be proven about how well the new features work, and there are the usual messy questions to ask about the role of generative AI in photography. But you can start to see very clearly how Google is shifting from saving “your photos” to cataloging your messy, complicated memories.
Google isn’t the only company applying a lot of computing power to photos and videos taken with its phones, but they are doing a lot more than Apple or Samsung are at this point.