It also goes against Apple's earlier statements about how photos should reflect real memories as they happened, not an idealized version like what Goolge was pitching during their Pixel 10 launch event last year.

Turns out they didn't actually believe that, they only said it because they were behind on GenAI. They caved to investor demand, no longer stand for any principles (if they ever had any in the first place)

There will be a generation of children who will grow up and look back at their childhood photos and wonder if they ever really happened.

I also laughed out loud when they are showing the "cleanup" tool and they guy is talking about removing "distractions" and then removes 2 of the 3 girls juggling and having fun.

Ah yes, those friends you were forming core memories with, or as our tech overlords call them, distractions.

Absolutely. I hoped they'd backtrack a bit on AI/algorithmic processing after so many influencers started to shit on the overly processed photos. Instead they not only ignore that, but they double down on making our own content even more fake.

I got a depressed-laugh out of the "clean up" demo. It's nothing new, but they always use other people as the example of "distractions". There's something very old-school stalin-style dystopian about normalizing airbrushing out everyone else from your photos because their existence is "distracting". [0] Show me an example with like... a leaf blew in the frame or something. Not straight up "this photo isn't about my friends that took this photo with me, get rid of them".

[0] https://www.youtube.com/live/hF8swzNR1-o?t=3800s