Google makes its ‘magic’ camera features FREE today as major roll out starts on Android – iPhone users benefit too

GOOGLE has started rolling out its top AI camera features to everyone today – including iPhones soon.

Users have been eagerly awaiting access to the company’s popular Magic Editor tool, which allows people to effortlessly move objects around in images.

Google

Google

It also includes a bunch of other effortless tricks, such as Photo Unblur and Magic Erase.

Until now, these were only available to paid Google Photos users or those who own the latest Google Pixel smartphone.

Last month, the tech giant announced that the features would become free for all from May 15.

That date came and passed without any changes, which left fans wondering whether they would appear at all.

Days later, a number of older Google Pixel phone owners have reported that the freebies have landed on their devices.

“Got it not too long ago on my 6a,” one Pixel owner wrote on Reddit.

“No. Maybe by the June feature drop if I’m lucky,” another commented.

Google initially said the features will roll out gradually, so it could take some time for everyone to get hold of them.

There are no reports of iPhone owners picking up on it just yet.

They will become available via the Google Photos app, the firm’s image storage service which hosts more than 4trillion photos for over a billion users worldwide.

However, there are some limitations.

Each user can only make ten saved edits per month for free.

Paid subscribers and Pixel owners can create as many as they like.

Devices must meet minimum requirements too for the features to work properly.

For an iPhone, it’s at least iOS 15 or and on Android you’ll need version 8.0 or up.

And your phone must have at least a 64-bit chip and 4GB of RAM.

WHY IS GOOGLE GIVING AWAY ITS TOP FEATURES?

Analysis by Jamie Harris, Senior Technology and Science Reporter at The Sun

The AI scene is really heating up, with everything from super smart voice assistants to AI-generated answers to questions directly in your searches.

But these tools don’t come cheap for the companies making them.

Some require a lot of energy-hungry data centres to run.

Earlier this year Samsung announced its own AI photo features but only pledged to make them free until the end of 2025, for now at least.

There’s no doubt that some AI features are popular, especially the photo editing ones like Google’s, making it effortless to remove objects and make changes that would have required a lot of manual work on Photoshop once upon a time.

But are people willing to pay for them? That’s the real question – and I suspect the vast majority will say no after shelling out a load for their smartphone in the first place.

Google’s move to offer limited access to its top AI features for everyone – including iPhone – is a smart one to get more people using the Google Photos app.

However, a lot of these features have been nabbed from the Pixel phone and it risks making people less inclined to opt for Google’s own handset.