The Google Clips Camera Puts AI Behind the Lens (theverge.com)

The Verge's Dieter Bohn reviews Google's AI camera, dubbed "Clips," which was announced alongside the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. Here's an excerpt: You know what a digital camera is. It's a lens and a sensor, with a display to see what you're looking at, and a button to take the picture. Google Clips is a camera, but it only has some of those parts. There's no display. There's a shutter button, but it's completely optional to use. Instead, it takes pictures for you, using machine learning to recognize and learn faces and look for interesting moments to record. I don't know if parents -- Google's target market -- will want it. I don't know if Google can find a way to explain everything it is (and isn't) to a broad enough audience to sell the thing in big numbers, especially at $249. I also don't know what the release date will be, beyond that it will be "coming soon." But I do know that it's the most fascinating camera I've used in a very long time.

Comments

the hell!?

[Blymie]

Oh come on! COME ON!

It's bad enough that even on hacked phones, we don't have access to the firmwares. And that we have no idea, 100% idea if the NSA/etc can exploit vulnerabilities to take pics even on a clean phone.

Even outside of that, on 'normal' phones, no doubt 1/2 the malware on Google Play is the CIA.

But no. That's not enough.

Now people are going to willingly walk around with devices that take pics of everything they do. What the hell man!

#_$)#@+_$)@#_+$)@#+$)@+_#)$+_

Re:the hell!?

[Rei]

Speak for yourself. I want better lifelogging; I find the current state of lifelogging apps, like Sony's "Lifelogger", quite poor. I'd love an app that logs *everything* I do, from as many sensors as it can, constrained only by realistic storage / bandwidth constraints. If something like this could be built into my cellphone or a cheap cell accessory, that would be awesome.

The main problem with it being simply an app on a cell phone is that cells have only front and rear cameras, but for a cell in your pocket what you really want is a side camera (which nobody has). But I can picture solutions for that problem...

Re:the hell!?

[geekmux]

Speak for yourself. I want better lifelogging; I find the current state of lifelogging apps, like Sony's "Lifelogger", quite poor. I'd love an app that logs *everything* I do, from as many sensors as it can, constrained only by realistic storage / bandwidth constraints. If something like this could be built into my cellphone or a cheap cell accessory, that would be awesome.

The main problem with it being simply an app on a cell phone is that cells have only front and rear cameras, but for a cell in your pocket what you really want is a side camera (which nobody has). But I can picture solutions for that problem...

Please understand that while you may want to record *everything* you do, the rest of us do not, nor do we want to be included.

And to clarify, the main problem we have here is technology like this bullshit does not leave us with a fucking choice to NOT participate. I have enough cameras and invasion of privacy going on right now, paid for by my taxes. I sure as shit don't need more.

And right now, I can't "picture" a solution to solve for the endless amount of narcissists invading society that seek to destroy the concept of privacy altogether.

Re:the hell!?

[Rei]

1) I love datasets. If I decide later that I want to, say, check how long it usually takes me to drive from Point A to Point B, or see if I noticed an earthquake on a particular day or really bloody anything I think up later, I want the data.

2) I like being able to look up things about my past. E.g., a coworker says "Oh, hey, I don't see you signed in on July 6th - do you know why?" I can go back and see "Oh yeah, I was sick then" or "I was in, but I was in a rush because of A and B and forgot to sign in" or "Oh yeah, I took a day of vacation then, did the vacation registration not go through?"

3) Sometimes my memory isn't great. It's great to have an "artificial memory" that never forgets

4) The inevitable "He said" / "she said" argument. You have proof right on-hand. Prove it to yourself first, and if you're right, prove it to the other person.

5) Contextualizing the past. Why do people take pictures or videos of major events? To remember and revisit them later. Why not have as much data as you can for those past events?

6) Rescue. If your phone logs everything to the cloud, and you have it set up so that friends or family members can access it in an emergency, it makes it a lot more likely that you'll be found.

7) Crime. I used to be on Google Latitude, but there was a couple month period in which I was using a phone in which it wasn't enabled, and during that period I was a victim of a crime in a place I wasn't familiar with. It was extreme difficult for me to find the location where it occurred. Full logging would not only have recorded the location, but also all of the details to prove its existence.

And on and on and on.

What I don't understand is why so many of you are afraid of logging yourselves. What the heck are you doing that you're so terrified of governments hacking into your data and stealing it?

Telescreen

[TuringTest]

The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape.

Re:Telescreen

[mccalli]

The future is turning out much more like Brave New World than 1984 or Shape of Things To Come. Both have their parts to add, but Brave New World is the one that's more or less nailed it. People are choosing to do this to themselves, not being forced to.

Re:Telescreen

[Opportunist]

And just like with Brave New World, some people actually see the dystopian future as utopian.

Re:More ways to mine your privacy!

[arth1]

That's okay. As long as the data is kept out of reach of the American three letter agencies, I feel better. Those are the ones with an ability to harm me, and an incentive to justify their existence.

But does the AI emulate a real user?

[petes_PoV]

For example, does the Clips take random photos at squiffy angles, upload them to a website where no-one will look at them and then delete them.

Can it also be used in concert halls, where all it records is a whited-out stage a few pixels wide against a totally dark background and a muffled sound because the user had their hand over the microphone.

if so, can I buy one, send it on holiday instead of going myself and then bore the bollocks off all and sundry by showing the photos to disinterested co-workers and claiming I had a wonderful time.