
Automatic Photography with Google Clips - dsr12
https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/automatic-photography-with-google-clips.html
======
aresant
Seeing Google's approach to quantifying life's special moments in this blog
post brings out the luddite in me.

When we had our first child every moment we captured felt special.

It was awe inspiring to watch our little human encounter and respond to the
world.

The big ones like the first step, the first word, the first laugh.

And the smaller ones like encounters with new friends, grandparents, first
time at the beach, etc.

After we had our second it was strange to see the similar reactions.

And we realized how many of these milestone responses were innate. And
predictable.

It wasn't necessarily less endearing but a little less magical as parents.

Google's approach is spot on.

And it makes me sad that life's "special moments" aren't just predictable,
they're inherently quantifiable by very basic AI.

As we barrel towards an AI enabled future it's going to be bittersweet to
unwravel & index the human experience.

~~~
exodust
I don't really get the point you're making. The AI isn't aware of parental
concerns, preferences or human behaviour specific to childhood activity. It's
evaluating "interestingness" visually, after someone chooses to put the camera
in front of an already interesting active area such as kids playing.

The AI is not waking up and saying to itself, "initiate full power mode
immediately because I detect _children_ playing in an interesting manner".

While I love new photo gadgets, the 3 hour battery life is a little
disappointing. I do like the general idea though, although what were they
thinking not adding a microphone?

Incidentally, I wonder what machine learning would take from reading your
post. Would it conclude that one sentence per paragraph is a good thing worth
replicating? I hope not!

~~~
ShabbosGoy
That’s the problem when most laypersons (including many in tech) talk about
AI. It adds noise to what machine learning actually is today, and makes it
hard to argue about the ethics of it when most people don’t know how to frame
the problem.

------
reaperducer
Google PHB: How can be bring in more data from the real world that we can
analyze, categorize, and monetize?

Google dev: Photos are our most powerful data gathering tool.

Google marketing: People go lots of places and do lots of things that they
don't photograph. How do we fix that?

Google PHB: We need to make it so they never ever stop taking pictures for us.

Google marketing: We'll make an app called "Clips" and tell them it's to make
their lives better, while it takes pictures of all kinds of things around them
that they didn't intend for anyone to see!

Google PHB: And we'll market it as "AI" because people will fall for anything
if you call it "AI" or "Machine Learning."

Google management: Great idea! Raises all around! Except for the dev. Just
throw another squeaky toy in his playpen. He'll think it's a bonus.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
I know you meant it as a joke, but deep inside I feel there might be some
truth to it.

------
jeffehobbs
I have one of these. It's neat, but the low frame rate for video makes the
clips themselves look choppy and genrallly subpar compared to phone video. The
"editorial" choices the camera makes are usually pretty great, though, erring
on the side of conservative even at the higher settings.

~~~
exodust
I guess they're targeting the shareable gfycat style of clip. Silent, looping,
eye-catching. I agree I'd prefer better framerate. I'd also prefer a mic. It's
a shame that "privacy" may have been a factor in omitting the mic, when it
should be a choice for the user.

What's the minimum focus distance? They don't say on their tech specs page.

------
chime
If I understand it right, the best use-case would be a party or event where I
could place the Clips camera pointed at the center/stage. The camera would
record for 3 hours and then at the end I could sync it with my phone to get
the best clips.

I can imagine having 3-4 of these 'Pick me up and point me at something
interesting' cameras for guests at a wedding. Instead of a human having to
filter through hours and hours of video, wedding photographers could offer a
set of cameras for $100/hour and then use the clips to make a short video with
the most interesting clips.

~~~
everdev
Yes, but it only captures short motion pictures with no audio.

~~~
onion2k
As anyone who's been near a film set will tell you, capturing good quality
audio in a busy environment is virtually impossible. You'll _never_ get good
sound using today's technology in a form like Clips, so that it doesn't really
matter that it doesn't record it. Just dub some music or commentary over the
top later.

~~~
exodust
Tell that to the billions of people already happily capturing video with sound
on their phones. Considering playback is often a phone speaker, it's not like
people require "film set" quality audio recordings. They just want to hear
audio from the recorded location, no matter how rough. In saying that, I
understand the Google Clips position with no audio, but I'd likely skip it
because of this.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Well, you can always add the audio manually from the original clip. If it
marks the timestamps, this could be done by a simple mp4box script.

~~~
exodust
The Google Clips camera does not have a mic, there is no audio in the original
clip.

------
jaggederest
I've thought for a while that the right thing, given bulletproof privacy
controls anyway, was a wearable camera that just captures 24/7 video/audio
with retrospective analysis for significance.

I don't know of anyone I'd trust with such a stream, though. It would have to
be on device, as they say.

~~~
davchana
but if it is only on device, (the video) then it is easily possible to get the
device damaged, lost, broken, robbed in order to stop that retrospective
analysis by a bad actor.

~~~
jaggederest
My goal is not "preventing bad things", but rather "remembering interesting
things".

------
pmontra
I wonder why it works only with the Pixels, iPhones and the Galaxy 7 and 8. Is
there some special hardware in those phones that any other phone doesn't have?

~~~
habitue
Likely Bluetooth 5 if I had to guess. Much higher bandwidth

~~~
askvictor
Tech specs say it requires wi-fi direct and Bluetooth le. The latter is part
of Bluetooth 4 spec. The tech specs also say it requires Android 7.0; nothing
of specific phones (or iPhones)

~~~
fluffyllemon
From the store page [1]:

"""

Compatible Android devices: Google Pixel, Google Pixel XL, Google Pixel 2,
Google Pixel 2 XL, Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung Galaxy S8.

Compatible iOS devices: iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus,
iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X.

"""

And the support page [2]:

"""

Google Clips™ currently supports the following Android devices running Android
7.0 Nougat and above:

Pixel and Pixel XL

Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL

Samsung Galaxy S7

Samsung Galaxy S8

Google Clips currently supports the following iOS devices running iOS 11 and
above:

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus

iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus

iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus

iPhone X

"""

[1]
[https://store.google.com/us/product/google_clips_specs?hl=en...](https://store.google.com/us/product/google_clips_specs?hl=en-
US)

[2]
[https://support.google.com/googleclips/answer/7545354?hl=en&...](https://support.google.com/googleclips/answer/7545354?hl=en&ref_topic=7334536)

~~~
askvictor
Annoyingly the tech specs part of that page says it requires Android 7.0, then
the requirements page says something different.

------
theyinwhy
Am I the only one who thinks the advertised pictures on the site look awful?
Low focal length, high aperture, no artistic look and feel at all. Why would I
want such low quality looking pictures? With such images it seems to be more a
device for scientific purposes than for capturing valuable moments of my life
I want to frame and hang in my kitchen.

~~~
wffurr
How do they compare with the typical smartphone camera picture? That's what
they're aiming for here. Building an automated DSLR would raise both the price
and the ML difficulty substantially.

Given your stated preferences, I am going to guess that you are not the target
market for this. People who post on Facebook or order photo books from
Shutterfly are.

~~~
theyinwhy
The images advertised look worse than those of mid-range smartphone cameras.
Compare those images with images of e.g. an iphone se and you will see that
the focal length of google clip distorts people to a level of ridicule.

Do you think there is a market for this camera? Because I really think there
is not: Extra gadget, needs to be setup anyways and, above all, poor image
quality (see advertised images), not en par with mid range smartphones.

Let's wait for next year to see if that product worked.

------
leemailll
it's so weird that they are selling a camera but doesn't list resolution in
tech spec but pixel density.

also for that price, one buy 3 raspberry pi with camera achieving same
function

~~~
exodust
I agree their spec page is missing some specs.

Resolution appears to be 1080 x 1080 - after downloading the clip on their
page. I assume this is max resolution but who knows.

One of the example videos is actually 30 fps, they must have bumped up the
framerate before publishing for some reason, or maybe the app does this by
default... [https://mannequin.storage.googleapis.com/austin-
overview/sma...](https://mannequin.storage.googleapis.com/austin-
overview/smart/video3.mp4)

