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At Samsung's Feb. 25 Galaxy Unpacked Event, the company showed off new Galaxy AI features, including call screening and camera upgrades. But what stood out to me most were the generative AI photo editing features, like Photo Assist.
"It doesn't just let you remove what was there," said Mason Page, from Samsung's product marketing team. "It helps you add what should have been there."
Don't like the clothes you were wearing in this photo? Have Galaxy AI change your fit! Wish your dog were here in this coffee shop with you? Manifest a corgi through the power of AI!
You're no longer limited to removing unwanted elements in your photos. Now you can adjust larger aspects of the pictures themselves.
It's tempting and easy and entirely inauthentic.
Look, I get it. Sometimes you just want to fix a photo. When I got engaged a couple of years ago, the only picture my now-wife and I had of the proposal featured me asking her to marry me while a stranger stood uncomfortably close between us -- interrupting and intruding on our special moment. We tried every simple AI-powered erase tool to remove the stranger from the photo, but nothing really worked.
But AI photo and video editing tools aren't harmless. Grok has been behind an estimated millions of nonconsensual deepfake images and videos, eventually leading to an EU investigation. Scammers are turning to celebrities' likenesses to power their AI-generated scams, and there's an ocean of AI slop drowning the internet. The expansion of AI tools and capabilities is making it continually easier to use AI to cause harm.
Introducing the ability to add large features with AI is a different story from just erasing small details. My particular worry is how these tools will interact with social media -- specifically, how they seem primed to amplify existing issues related to mental health and self-image.
Sure, the dog is cute, but it wasn't at that coffee shop.
Samsung/Screenshot by CNETThe endless pursuit of unrealistic expectations
One problem with social media is how it can implicitly foster a highly curated image of someone's life, focused almost exclusively on positive experiences. A post about a major event or a fun trip might spark an eruption of likes and positive comments, which may entice someone to be more selective and post only about the highlights of their life.
A 2023 study from Germany's Ruhr-Universität Bochum looked at the relationship between photo editing and self-esteem on social media. The authors wrote, "The depiction of reality is usually not a documentary but part of a narrative which the photo editor intends to project on the public screen."
The gap between reality and expectations can weigh particularly heavily on young adults.
A 2024 study by the Universidad Europa de Madrid examined the relationship between social media use and physical measurements of self-esteem. "The blurring of lines between reality and digitally enhanced portrayals leads individuals to harbor unrealistic expectations for their bodies and lifestyles," the researchers wrote. "The impact is especially pronounced among teenagers and young adults who are more susceptible to social media influences and are at a critical developmental stage concerning self-identity and body image."
The gap between a social post and reality can already be plenty fuzzy with basic tools like filters and the good old-fashioned process of taking a million photos in pursuit of one "perfect" shot. But Galaxy AI's examples of changing or adding major elements raise the stakes of distinguishing between reality and fabrication.
It's one thing to wonder how many selfies someone took before they found the most flattering angle. It's something else entirely to wonder if that person even owns the outfit they're wearing. While it's not inherently harmful for someone to swap the style of their clothes in a photo, the availability of these tools invites a situation in which everyone is competing to create a better, more impressive "impossible" image.
But the companies behind these tools aren't talking about the consequences. (Samsung couldn't even be bothered to mention AI when it talked about its environmental initiatives.) Yet when it comes to young adults trying to navigate online perfection versus reality, the consequences are important.
"The insurmountable gap perceived between one's real self and the polished images online foster[s] feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness," wrote the Universidad Europa de Madrid researchers.
The world, and the internet in particular, is already plenty efficient at stoking those feelings. And the easier we make it for people to fundamentally alter images, the more they are going to feel they can't live up to expectations that aren't grounded in reality. It's already a problem, and new tools and features will make it worse.
What's the fix?
Parents who can talk to teens about social media use and set sustainable limits may be able to mitigate the downsides.
The American Psychological Association reported in 2023 that "Teens and young adults who reduced their social media use by 50% for just a few weeks saw significant improvement in how they felt about both their weight and their overall appearance," compared with peers who continued their normal social media use.
The bigger battle is combating the ideas and behaviors behind those unattainable standards.
"Fostering a digital environment that values authenticity over perfection, and well-being over appearances, is crucial for mitigating the negative impacts of self-presentation on social media," wrote researchers from Universidad Europa de Madrid.
Ultimately, my wife and I gave up on trying to edit the stranger out of our engagement photo. Their presence was unwelcome and distracting, but it was also part of the moment -- one we try to laugh at now. We have professional photos from our eventual wedding, which thankfully turned out well and are devoid of strangers.
But the proposal photo captures the true story of that day: the authentic mix of joy and weirdness from that moment, which is something these AI tools can't generate.
