Google has officially announced its new Pixel 8 phones, with improved cameras that can boost your photos using artificial intelligence.
Two handsets are available to pre-order today, including the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, which start from £699 and £999 respectively.
The cheaper model packs a 6.2-inch screen and two cameras on the back, while the high-end phone has a 6.7-inch display and three rear snappers. They’ll both arrive online and in-stores on October 12.
Google announced the phones at its Made by Google event for hardware products, where it also revealed the new Pixel Watch 2 smartwatch.
Once again, the standout features on the Pixel 8 phones are made possible by AI and powered by Google’s custom-built processor. Google says its new Tensor G3 chip can run multiple machine-learning tasks with the same accuracy as its cavernous data centres, where it hosts powerful remote PCs.
In terms of everyday use, both phones offer a bag of magic editing tricks that can completely transform your images.
A feature called Best Take in Google Photos can alter people’s expressions in a group shot by combing through multiple snaps. You can use it to turn glum faces into smiley ones, open shut eyes, and even change the position of a person’s head so they are facing the camera. Meanwhile, Magic Editor lets you reposition and resize people in a shot.
The AI features aren’t just limited to photos. A new tool called Audio Magic Eraser lets you scrub unwanted background noise from videos. Here, the AI can identify sounds and segment them into different layers for you to control.
Soon, the Pixel 8 Pro will add Video Boost to further improve your recordings by processing them over the cloud. That means that Google will essentially adjust the colour, lighting, stabilisation and graininess of your clips to make them look more natural. In a demo, Google boasted that the feature will result in better quality videos than those captured on Apple’s top-of-the-range iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Elsewhere, Google’s AI models can read out, translate, and summarise web pages when you long-press the Pixel 8 power button. The tech can also discern between multiple languages when transcribing your texts.
Another impressive feature is Call Screen, which uses AI to answer unwanted or spam calls. When somebody rings you, Google’s voice bot will do the talking, and either hang up on nuisance callers or forward important calls straight to you. In the future, it will also suggest automated replies so you can respond to simple calls, like appointments, with pre-written messages.
Alongside the new phones, Google also announced that it is combining its virtual assistant with its Bard AI chatbot. The company claims the overhauled digital helper will be able to hear, speak, and see.
The new Google Assistant will appear on phones to help summarise your emails, make grocery lists, offer directions, and recognise objects around you. It will also be able to create captions for your photos. Google is previewing it with testers now, before it making it available to more people.
