If a company releases new phone models but doesn't change the cameras, would anyone pay attention? Fortunately that's not the case with Google's new Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro Fold phones, which make a few advancements in the hardware -- hello, telephoto camera on the base-level Pixel for the first time -- and also in the software that runs it all, with generative AI playing an even bigger role than it has before.
"This is the first year where not only are we able to achieve some image quality superlatives," Isaac Reynolds, group product manager for the Pixel cameras, told CNET, "but we're actually able to make you a better photographer, because generative AI and large models can do things and understand levels of context that no technology before could achieve."
Modern smartphone cameras must be more than glass and sensors, because they have to compensate for the physical limitations of those same glass and sensors. You can't expect a tiny phone camera to perform as well as a large glass lens on a traditional camera, and yet the photos coming out of the Pixel 10 models surpass their optical abilities. In a call that covered a lot of photographic ground, Reynolds shared with me details about new features as well as issues of how we can trust images when AI -- in Google's own tools, even -- is so prevalent.
Pro Res Zoom adds generative AI to reach 100x
The new Pro Res Zoom feature is likely to get the most attention because it strives for something exceptionally difficult in smartphones: long-range zoom that isn't a fuzzy mess of pixels.
You see this all the time: Someone on their phone spreads two fingers against the screen to make a distant object larger in the frame. Photographers die a little each time that happens because, by not sticking to the main zoom levels -- 1x, 2x, 5x and so on -- the person is relying on digital zoom; the camera app is making pixels larger and then using software to try to clean up the result. Digital zoom is certainly better than it once was, but each time it's used, the person sacrifices image quality for more zoom in the moment.
Enlarge Image At up to 30x zoom, the Super Res Zoom feature upscales the image for a sharp result. Andrew Lanxon/CNET
Google's Super Res Zoom feature, introduced with the Pixel 3, interpolates and sharpens the image up to 30x zoom level on the Pixel 10 Pros (and up to 20x zoom on the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro Fold). The new Pro Res Zoom on the Pixel 10 Pro pushes way beyond that to 100x zoom -- with a significant lift from AI.
Past 30x, Pro Res Zoom uses generative AI to refine and rebuild areas of the image based on the underlying pixels captured by the camera sensor. It's similar to the technology that Magic Editor uses when you move an object to another area in the image, or type a prompt to add things that weren't there in the first place. Only in this case, the Pixel Camera app creates a generative AI version of what you captured to give the image crisp lines and features. All the processing is performed on-device.
Enlarge Image Pro Res Zoom takes the soft zoomed-in version (left) and uses generative AI to rebuild a version that's sharper and more detailed (right). Patrick Holland/CNET
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