Google seems to be working hard on expanding its editing options in Google Photos. We recently saw the online titan add a quick facial touch-up feature. Now another similar feature has gone live. It is a very simple and straightforward “AI Enhance” button that sits beside the Enhance and Dynamic buttons that were already present in the Auto tab in the image editor.
We tried it for ourselves, and while it can restore highlights and shadows quite effectively and deal with common issues caused by bad lighting and boost colors slightly, it is nothing truly spectacular in any way. Definitely nothing that competing AI enhancement solutions aren’t capable of already. Still, being subtle is not always a bad thing, especially when it comes to photography, and we appreciate having an extra tool to play around with. Plus, it seems that AI Enhance is now available worldwide for all Android users, and it is seemingly free in its current form.
One interesting note here is that Google claims that “output varies by device”. That is a pretty clear hint that at least some processing is taking place on-device. That said, we did try to use it fully offline, and it refused to work, so don’t expect it to be fully untethered.