Google introduced a new AI-powered camera feature called Zoom Enhance at last year’s “Made by Google” event in October. The feature was supposed to be available for the Pixel 8 Pro devices last year, but it didn’t happen. However, at this year’s “Made by Google” event, the company showcased the upgraded feature once again.
The latest camera feature is available in the Pixel 9 series out of the box. In addition, the company announced that the Zoom Enhance is now rolling out to the Pixel 8 Pro units as well.
Pixel 8 Pro users will be able to use Zoom Enhance to boost quality of zoomed-in photos
Google has briefly mentioned the Zoom Enhance feature in a blog post where the brand has detailed the camera features of the Pixel 9 series. The functionality will be able to take advantage of AI to boost the quality of zoomed-in photos. It lets you pinch in on an image you captured earlier. If the zoomed-in photo happens to be blurry or pixelated, Google’s AI tricker will kick in to improve the details. The feature opens up new possibilities when it comes to framing and focusing on the most important part of an image.
Notably, this feature is reminiscent of the “Enhance” function you often see in sci-fi movies and police procedural TV shows. Unfortunately, Google hasn’t yet fully detailed how the Zoom Enhance function works. However, the company did note that “Zoom Enhance intelligently fills in the gaps between pixels and predicts fine details for high-quality, post-capture zoom results”.
The sci-fi-inspired feature will be available on the Pixel 9 series out of the box
Zoom Enhance will be available on the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro Fold right at launch. The company has also released the same functionality for the Pixel 8 Pro. It took the brand nearly a year to launch the Zoom Enhance camera feature. It looks like the software wasn’t ready to support the sci-fi camera feature.
As of now, it’s not clear if and when Google plans to launch the same for the standard Pixel 8 series models. Notably, Google has also introduced a few more advanced camera features with the Pixel 9 series. We hope that some of them will eventually make their way to the older Pixel phones in the coming weeks.
2024-08-14 15:04:54