This really doesn’t surprise me.
Fuuuuck that.
Why ?
Even ignoring all the privacy issues with that, it’s kinda shit to unnecessarily lose phone features when you’ve got no signal
That’s how phones have always worked. As long as they are not automatically ingesting data from people without permission. I don’t see an issue with this. At least in this instance we have some choice in what we send or don’t. It’s no more privacy nightmare than mid-Journey doll-e or any of the others.
Because it’s a privacy nightmare.
Using Google products has always been a “privacy nightmare” - it’s not like this is some mega open source phone or anything it’s literally Google’s flagship. Is this really surprising? Playing with fire gets you burned.
Googles phones are the easiest to de-google surprisingly
And if you do, they won’t upload your stuff to the cloud anymore.
But if you use Google’s OS and services, you really shouldn’t be surprised they upload your data to Google.I’m not surprised at all, I’ve been trying to not use googles services for years
And if you do, they won’t upload your stuff to the cloud anymore.
Wait - is that praise or criticism?
both! some people want Google’s features and don’t care about privacy.
In what way ? Everything you do on phone Google has access to and therefore any govt body as well.
Privacy on a phone is a myth unless you use a modded phone
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ITT people who don’t understand that generative ML models for imagery take up TB of active memory and TFLOPs of compute to process.
That’s wrong. You can do it on your home PC with stable diffusion.
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“He’s off by multiple orders of magnitude, and he doesn’t even mention the resource that GenAI models require in large amounts (GPU), but he’s not wrong”
And a lot of those require models that are multiple Gigabytes in size that then need to be loaded into memory and are processed on a high end video card that would generate enough heat to ruin your phones battery if they could somehow shrink it to fit inside a phone. This just isn’t feasible on phones yet. Is it technically possible today? Yes, absolutely. Are the tradeoffs worth it? Not for the average person.
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You can for example run some upscaling models on your phone just fine (I mentioned the SuperImage app in the photography tips megathread). Yes the most powerful and memory-hungry models will need more RAM than what your phone can offer but it’s a bit misleading if Google doesn’t say that those are being run on the cloud.
People didn’t think this was the case already?
When some company praises the ground braking AI capability of a new SoC they have been built, you might get the idea that it’s doing these tasks on said SoC.
Why would you think otherwise?
A list of what this phone does offline and what not would be great.
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So no more pixel phones for me.
How did you think it worked before this?
People are literally clueless. But then they’d complain when an on phone AI capable model came out, maybe from the fan noise equivalent to a rack server and the backpack battery it needed to run for a couple hours.
Thats how you tell the difference from actual privacy advocates. Somebody with half a clue would NEVER actually expect this stuff to be able to happen on device.
Pixels have never been “stock android” instead they have been close to stock but with extra AI features over it (e.g Magic Eraser, Now Playing, etc)
Surprisingly they’re the easiest phones to degoogle as well
So “no more pixel phones for you” because it needs to upload shit that literally cant be done on a phone? LOL. If you cared abkut privacy to the level youre pretending you do, that ONLY leaves Pixels as a choice, and Graphene.
Not a privacy conscious person alive buys a Pixel, and then runs it stock.
I think you have no clue what the g3 is capable of. Magic eraser for example can be used entirely on device. THAT’S what even Google admits.
So now tell me why it needs to upload the pictures…just for computing? 🤡
Well, the Magic Eraser is just an algorithmic fill. It’s not an actual generative ai. So it doesn’t require so much compute power. If Pixel 8 had the new generative Magic Eraser on device, it would be either really bad or take minutes to process.
It is generative ai via ml. What are you talking about… If it wasn’t then it proves even more my point. Why uploading it for computing?!
It’s obvious that you don’t understand this topic at all. So it would be better to end this discussion. But I will try to explain. Old Magic Eraser: definitely not generative ai, because it doesn’t “generate” anything - just completes the missing part with the other parts of the image. So it’s not that resource heavy and can be processed on device. It doesn’t require complex diffusion generative models. New Magic Eraser: uses actual generative ai, because it generates whole new objects that replace the part you want to erase. And that requires a lot of processing, because it needs large image generation models that currently can’t be run on the device. Although, Pixel 8 could run some small image generation models, they would be far worse than the large models that Google runs on their servers. In the future, the technology will get better and more lightweight. So in a few years, it will be possible to run a good image gen models on device. But that’s not the current focus of the industry.
Are you not capable to read the press statement from Google itself? GOOGLE SAYS THEY COMPUTE MAGIC ERASER ENTIRLY ON G3.
Now they also upload the photos AFTER the process.
I think we both misunderstood each other. I looked up the press release and they say that there were some generative improvements to Magic Eraser that run on device. But that’s not in the “Magic Editor” UI I meant, when I was talking about the new features of Pixel 8. You were mad at Google because of the upload to the cloud. That happens ONLY if you use the Magic Editor that uses large models in their datacenters for best results. But if you use the normal Magic Eraser it will work on device and hence offline. Although it does use some generative AI now - I 100% guarantee you that it will be worse than the Magic Editor, which uses image models that are too powerful for the Tensor G3. So you were angry for nothing.
So much for the brilliant AI-specialized Tensor processor
It’s basically just a mediocre processor that offloads interesting things to the mothership.
Yep. What a joke. Goes to show you that google could Make these pixel features available to all android devices if they wanted to.
And?
Yeah, obviously. The storage and compute required to actually run these AI generative models is absolutely massive, how would that fit in a phone?
They aught to just slap a phone in a 3090
This just strengthens the argument to install privacy/security first operating systems like CalyxOS and GrapheneOS. I don’t was a phone that’s more a service subscription than it is hardware. I have the pixel 8 and didn’t get the pro due to the offloading to Google servers for some “features”.
Just waiting for GrapheneOS to be released for the 8… Until then, I’m sitting uncomfortable knowing my phone is uploading telemetry to Google servers…
Currently using GrapheneOS on my 8 Pro, and the experience has been extremely smooth so far.
Yea I was tempted for a second to get it, but there was a comment that it “should” be possible to upgrade to the released version when available, I don’t want to have to mess around in the event that it’s not. So I’m just going to wait a week or so.
I’ve bitten the bullet, replaced my Redmi 13 to a Pixel 7 + GrapheneOS - because the MIUI spyware and google spyware are just too much… I still don’t get why , as an owner of a phone , I’m not the owner of the phone.
You’re very much the owner of the phone, which is why you were able to put Graphene on it.
I can’t put grapheneOS on my p7 since at&t sells phones with locked bootloaders. I didn’t know this when I bought it or I wouldn’t have bought it.
Oh yeah, only unlocked phones can boot custom os, carrier locked are not. Unfortunate you had to find out the hard way. I could’ve sworn it was on graphene’s website or something.
Well, yes, however, installing GrapheneOS may mean not having access to “features” which were part of the marketing for the phone… Which begs the question around what are you paying for? To me, it’s like you are paying for a product and also for services. Although the p8 and p8p both have 7 years of support, I wonder if that extends to features and services that are cloud based?
Fair enough when its out of context, but a privacy advocate doesnt but a Pixel for anything thats touted as a Google feature, what they’re paying for, is the hardware that ironically allows them to most effectively cut ties with Google as a whole.
People who dont do that could care less how its happening, only that it is, and they their battery lasts.
Yea, Google features are very anti privacy, it’s funny how it’s still one of the most secure phones on the market. I got the pixel 8 for the fact its going to be supported with GrapheneOS, and get 7 years of security updates.
Isn’t that kinda the dream. We have devices that remote the os. So we get a super powerful device that keeps getting updated and upgraded. We just need a receiver ?
Isn’t that what we want. Can reduce down the bulk on devices. Just a slab with battery, screen and modem and soc that can power the remote application ?
Sometimes that’s what people dream about. On the other hand that hybrid cloud model is giving up the last remnants of computing autonomy and control over devices we own.
