Look out, Canva: Google Pics’ AI modifying is horrifying good
Abstract created by Sensible Solutions AI
In abstract:
- Google launched Pics, a brand new AI-powered picture modifying app utilizing Nano Banana 2 generative AI that may generate, edit, and manipulate photographs just like Canva.
- PCWorld notes the app excels at AI-driven textual content manipulation inside photographs, avoiding font approximation points that plague Canva’s Magic Layers characteristic.
- At the moment in restricted testing, Pics will finally combine into Google Workspace, although long-term success is determined by Google’s dedication and subscription pricing mannequin.
In March, Canva made an enormous deal of Magic Layers, and its capability to deal with completely different parts of a picture as editable layers. On first blush, Google’s new Google Pics app seems like it may do the identical — after which some.
Google Pics is a brand new, standalone Google app, powered by Google’s Nano Banana 2 generative AI engine, that Google launched right here at its Google I/O convention in Mountain View, Calif. It’s being examined by a restricted group of testers. Finally, nonetheless, Google plans to make it a part of its Workspace suite that features Sheets, Docs, and Slides.
Pics can be utilized to generate, edit, and in any other case manipulate photographs, very similar to Canva — though Canva’s ground-up design parts and third-party integrations (even into Google!) — give it a considerable benefit.
Nonetheless, Pics is spectacular, at the very least throughout the slim confines of Google’s demo suite right here at Google I/O. Like many productiveness apps, it feels decidedly iterative: Pics is an app that may each create and edit utilizing generative AI, very similar to Google’s picture modifying instruments on its Android platform.
One notable characteristic of Pics is how nicely it edits and manipulates textual content, working throughout the talents of AI reasonably than outlined fonts.
Put one other approach, a person making use of Canva’s Magic Layers can extract textual content from a picture and Canva will attempt to map it to a font it understands, at the very least in my expertise utilizing the device. This could work flawlessly, particularly when utilizing a recognized font. However when Canva encounters a font it doesn’t perceive, it has to approximate it. In that state of affairs, the product seems a bit off.
Pics makes use of AI and simply AI, which works successfully. Contemplate how nicely a contemporary generative AI picture mannequin approximates pictures — gone are the times of blobby photographs with a number of fingers. Modifying a pretend promotional flyer required a easy click on, a number of modifications in a textual content field, and a wait of about 10 seconds to recalculate the picture. (Google representatives stated that the time and effectivity of the mannequin will additional enhance as customers use and prepare it.)
By now, Canva’s built-in design toolset is a refined machine. Google is nicely, Google, with a status for launching bold initiatives after which unceremoniously killing them — like its Sora AI video generator, for instance. Workspace, nonetheless, appears to have an aura of permanence about it, probably as a result of it falls underneath the umbrella of a subscription. In any occasion, Pics seems like a reliable device you’ll wish to use…although you’ll must pony up for a subscription, too.
