VANCOUVER, B.C. – His parents may have bought him Google’s newest flagship smartphone to take the sting out of their impending divorce, but 11-year-old Andy Liske is using the phone’s state-of-the-art generative AI camera software to ensure he never has to think about how much his parents hate each other ever again.
“I cried for like a week when they told me they were getting a divorce, so they got me this new phone to cheer me up. Now when I look at the screen, all I have to do is apply this real-time filter and they look like they love each other again,” Andy said, while keeping his eyes constantly on his phone so as to not break the illusion that everything is going to stay the same forever.
“I still have to drown out their arguments by listening to music on my headphones, but the next Android update will include a new translation AI that makes angry words sound loving, so soon everything I see and hear will be like it was before my mom got sad and my dad started spending every weekend with that woman.”
Google’s new ‘Be Happy, Please, Just Be Happy’ feature changes the facial expressions and body language of any people in the frame to create the illusion that nothing bad is happening and to guarantee that any photos taken during times of stress or sorrow will match the cheerful filter many humans choose to place on their own memories.
Andy’s mother, Cynthia Liske, isn’t pleased about her son’s retreat into the world depicted on the screen he refuses to put down. “I don’t think it’s healthy to be able to alter photos as they’re being taken to reflect a world that doesn’t exist, one that’s never existed. Okay, maybe it existed for like a month right after we got married, before the turd started treating me like a bang maid, but Andy’s never known that world. Instant photoshop won’t alter reality, it’ll only make it look worse in comparison.”
“But, you know, it’s fine to alter reality a little, after the fact,” Mrs. Liske continued. “Like using a small filter on a photo for your profile on a dating app because everyone’s telling you that you need to ‘get out there’ again but you really don’t photograph well and if you don’t use the filter you look disturbingly like your mother, that’s fine, right?”
“Right?”
Andy’s father, Brandon Liske, could not be reached for comment because he was with that woman.
In other augmented photography news, Apple has just announced that its next iPhone update will not only allow users to instantly insert images of their deceased loved ones into their photos and videos, it will start doing it randomly for them.
