Feb 04, 2026
3 min read
From simple enhancements to facial hallucination features, today's phones choose what our memories are.You may love the results, but they may change the way you see the world.
Your phone edits all your photos using artificial intelligence - is it changing your view of reality?
Smartphones choose what our memories look like, from simple enhancements to expressive facial expressions.You may like the results, but they may change how we see the world.
Have you ever taken a picture of the moon with your phone?If you don't have a Samsung Galaxy device, you're probably disappointed.These phones have a "100x Space Zoom" feature that captures the Moon with amazing clarity for fingernail-sized camera lenses.That beats what we got from Apple's iPhone, but there's one thing: Samsung's moon photos are fake.
A Reddit user famously demonstrated this by holding a Samsung up to an intentionally blurry, pixelated image of the moon on his computer.His phone was happy to oblige and took a beautifully clear photo, full of craters and shadows that weren't visible in the original photo.The company calls this a "detail enhancement feature."The reality is that Samsung has trained AI to recognize the moon and fill in the information when the camera can't.get them
You won't find anything dramatically enabled by default on every phone.But no matter what device you have in your pocket, every tap of the camera button triggers a series of algorithms and AI processing tools that run in the background.They can perform trillions of operations, all before the image is saved to your photo roll.
Basically, it made for a beautiful and (mostly) reliable photo.But at extremes, some phones have AI enhancements that are different from what you'd expect to see with your own eyes.Next time you take a photo, ask yourself, is your camera documenting reality or negotiating with it?
"It's called computational photography," said Jiv Attar, CEO of Glass Imaging, who worked on the team that created the iPhone's portrait mode.Your phone goes a long way in collecting the light that hits your camera's sensor.If the camera was better, he says, it guesses what the image would look like and then creates it for you.
"Artificial intelligence-based features are designed to improve image quality while maintaining reliability," says a Samsung representative."Users remain in full control with the ability to disable AI features based on their personal preferences."
But even with the AI-driven editing features turned off, the algorithms still grumble about the images you've created.
Thomas Germain is a senior technology reporter and author of the weekly Keeping tabs column, a guide to navigating the digital world and building better relationships with our devices.
What happens when you take a picture
"When you click capture on your phone, you're not just taking a photo, you're actually taking four to 10 photos, under normal lighting conditions," says Attar.Your phone combines these images together to create a photo that is arguably better than an individual snapshot.Some images may be duplicated.Others prioritize different parts of the image.
These and other basic processes modify the photo to solve problems that the average person doesn't want to see.Noise reduction reduces random errors that appear, for example, as grainy textures.Color correction brings the image closer to what you see in real life.Then there's high dynamic range, or HDR, which melts away some photos taken in increasingly low light, preserving deep shadows and highlights in the same shot.Your phone also despises anything vague and launches a multi-pronged attack to counter it.
iPhones, for example, use a feature called Deep Fusion with AI trained on millions of images.In addition to handling many of the above techniques, these neural networks can recognize objects in an image, process them differently, and replace individual pixels based on other previously viewed images."It's very high precision," Attar says.
The result is a photo that looks crisp and clear under favorable conditions.But some critics and keen-eyed enthusiasts believe that modern phones sometimes go too far, producing images with a weird, plastic feel or flat textures that look like watercolor paintings.Phones are working so hard to overcome problems that they can even introduce weird distortions that look like AI illusions if you look at the smallest details.Zoom in.Some people are so unsatisfied with the overly polished photos of new phones that they go back to older models or carry around another phone to take pictures with.
"At Apple, we're focused on helping users capture real moments so they can relive the memories they've experienced," says an Apple spokesperson.looks, giving them the tools to shape themselves the way they want."
There is a better way to look at this.You can do most of it by hand if you are skilled and patient.Now, "instead of adapting to these different dimensions, we have automation", said Lev Manovich, professor of digital culture and media at the Graduate Center, City University of New York."Special abilities that were once available to professionals are now available to hobbyists."
But at the same time, your phone often makes creative or artistic decisions about the memories you capture.Users may not know what's going on, and on some phones, the AI does much more than adjust settings.
"I believe that smartphone manufacturers really want to produce photos that people take. They are not trying to make fake pictures," said Raffael Mantiuk, professor of graphics and displays at the University of Cambridge in the UK.
"It's pure illusion"
Of course, there is an implicit norm in this debate: the idea that a "real" photo should look like it's from the movie era.That comparison is probably unfair.Every camera has always involved some baked-in processing decisions from the start.It's easy to hear the word "AI" and assume it means something terrible.In many cases, the algorithms correct for errors inherent in the tiny lenses and sensors used in phone cameras.
However some features push the boundaries further.
For example, phones made for the Asian market, especially Chinese brands, often default to AI "beauty filters" that automatically smooth or change skin tone and adjust facial features.
"It's pure delusion," Attar said."Asian phone models have these AI enhancement features by default. So it can detect eyebrows and draw hair when it's not enough to render, or just add eyes looking for people in the background."
Atar and others say this depends on cultural norms and preferences.You won't find it on phones made by the American tech giant.iPhones don't offer built-in beauty filters, and Google disabled them by default on Pixel devices in 2020, citing adverse effects on mental health.
"Improvement is not new," said Manovich."Enhancement has been a big part of photography since the 1850s and it's similar to what people do today, beautifying the face, enhancing the skin. But like automatically adding new information that isn't there, I feel like it's a new thing. ... In some ways it's still there. In other ways it's something else."
This is not just a philosophical question.Research has shown that AI-edited photos and videos can create false memories or change the way we think about our own bodies.
American manufacturers have also introduced brands that are showing significant trends in AI photography.Google's Pixel phones, for example, have the excellent Take feature.We all have a group photo where someone closed their eyes or forgot to smile.(Usually me, I never learned how to pose.) With the best of Google, take many photos and then choose the most beautiful faces from different images for the final image.
It can be a beautiful photo, but this is a photo of a moment that never happened.On the other hand, "you probably want to remember the moment," says Mantyuk.After all, it is a group photo, he says, not evidence of a crime.
"Authenticity has been a guiding principle in how we've developed the Pixel Camera," said a Google spokesperson."Ultimately, we're a team of passionate photographers. We're focused on creating what people, including us, have always wanted to do with a mobile camera."
How to view 'raw' photos
If you do not like it, you can turn off HDR, turn off the beauty filters and disable Samsung's scene optimizer setting if you want to be realistic (but less beautiful) moon photos.But if you want a clean picture immediately from the sensors of the camera, completely untouched by all the various forms of artificial intelligence, you need to take extra steps.
The Pro Mode setting on newer Samsung phones captures completely unvarnished photos.Despite the name, the iPhone's ProRAW feature (only available on Pro models) involves artificial intelligence processing.For truly raw iPhone photos, you need special settings in a third-party app.Some popular free options include VSCO Capture and Adobe Lightroom.
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What you end up with is not going to be good in the traditional sense.It's not that anyone is trying to hide raw images, they're just not that useful to most normal people (although professional photographers use them).There will be a lot of noise, the colors may not look correct, it will be softer and out of focus.But the original photo does have a "bad retro" feel to it, if that's your thing.
Still, Manovich is one of those who believe it's worth spending time on a little raw photography."To understand what your phone normally does and to have a better understanding of what your photos actually are and what they represent," says Manovich.
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