Sean Hollister / The Verge:
— Google and Samsung aren’t the only ones baking magical AI selective photo erasers into their devices — they’re about to become table stakes for Windows PCs too.
Microsoft has just announced Generative erase, a feature that lets you do similar things in the Photos app that comes bundled with Windows.
Above and below, you can see how Microsoft disappears a dog’s leash and some unintentional photobombers using the power of generative AI:
While that may not be quite as nifty a party trick as other AI fakery you’ve seen, you won’t need to buy a new Pixel or Galaxy to integrate this into your life, either. Microsoft says it’s not only rolling this out to Windows 11, but also backporting all of the Photos’ AI edit features to Windows 10, in addition to Windows 11 for Arm64 devices. Those include a background removal feature as well.
These tools are for Windows Insiders for now, though. Says Microsoft: “This update is beginning to roll out to Windows Insiders in all channels today (including Windows Insiders on Windows 10 in the Release Preview Channel). Make sure to update your app to version number 2024.11020.21001.0 or higher.”
The company’s blog post doesn’t say whether AI-edited photos will come with metadata or watermarks so you can distinguish them from unedited ones.
— Techmeme