A New Miraculous Camera：Google's AI-Powered Clips Camera

April 5, 2018 | 10:20 p.m.（Beijing time)

By Shan Qiqing

Sources:The Paper, The Washington Post, CNBC, Engadget, The Verge, iJustine.

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A woman is showing how to use Google Clips camera in the video.Video retrieved from iJustine on April 5, 2018.

Abstract: A new AI-powered camera Clips producted by Google has been on sale recently. It can decide what to record on its own. Is it a miraculous tool or a terrible artificial intelligence?

Photo retrieved from The Verge on April 5, 2018.

When Google presented its new AI-based camera Google Clips, it caused people to freak out.

The funky pocket-sized Clips camera is on sale for$249 (about 1570 RMB). It candecide on its own what to recordwithout people clicking the shutter. Whenever it’s on, theartificial intelligenceinside is watching. Google Clips is constantly looking out for certain people, facial expressions like smiles, and other indications that it should record footage, Google product manager Juston Payne said at Google's hardware event in San Francisco on October 4, 2017.

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The photos show the look of Google Clips camara. Photos retrieved from The Verge on April 5, 2018.

Clips is like a GoPro with a mind of its own. It’s the first camera that seeks touse AI to replace the main job of photographers: pressing the shutter button. It’s not hard to imagine the appeal to helicopter parents (parents who care too much about their children) and anyone who spends too much time operating a smartphone camera. You can set this thing near your baby (human, feline or canine), and it willsift through all the boring moments to recordseven-second video bursts of some of the interesting ones. Many of us record far more than we ever edit, or even look at. To Google, that looks like a problem AI might solve.

A seven-second snippet of a cat at KitTea Cat Cafe captured by Google Clips.Photo retrieved from The Washington Post by Geoffrey A. Fowler on April 5，2018 .

With Clips, in AI you must trust. There is a button you can use to force it to capture, but if you’re using that, you might as well get out your phone. There’s no screen on the back to show you what it sees. It can learn which faces are important if you take a three-second close-up or give it permission to learn from shots in an existing Google Photos library.

How does Clips know what’s interesting? Google says it spent three years studying what people do with cameras. Then ithired three professionals— a documentary filmmaker, a photojournalist and a fine arts photographer — to train its camera how to pick good shots when they happen. They taught it to look for joyous faces, especially of children, and to recognize dogs and cats.

As for the privacy, Google replied that they have considered. Firstly, the Clips camera has no recording function. When it’s on,an LED light will come onto tell you that it is shooting. Besides, the camera willnot transfer photos automaticallywithout permission. All photos and videos can be removed from the camera if you want.Yet even so, many people still worry about privacy. “This doesn’t even *seem*innocent,” tweeted Elon Musk,the founder, CEO and lead designer of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; and co-founder and CEO of Neuralink,after Google announced Clips on October 8, 2017.

Elon Musk commented on the Clips on Twitter on October 8, 2017.Photo retrieved from The Paper on April 5, 2018.

当谷歌今年推出新的应用人工智能（AI）的相机Clips的时候，人们异常兴奋。

这个时髦的口袋式相机正在发售中，价格为249美元（折合人民币大概1570元）。可以自己决定拍摄什么，不需要人们按快门。当它开着的时候，人工智能会开启“看”的功能。谷歌的产品主管JustonPayne在去年十月四日在旧金山的谷歌新闻发布会上说，Clips会“看”某些人，某些面部表情，比如微笑，或者其他它应该记录影片的迹象。

Clips像Gopro一样有自己的想法。这是第一台用人工智能取代摄影师按快门职责的照相机。不难想象，这很吸引直升机式父母（像直升机一样盘旋在孩子上方，想时时刻刻监视孩子的父母）和那些花很多时间在操作相机上的人。你可以把Clips安装在你的宝宝身边（或者猫咪和小狗），它会在所有无聊的瞬间里筛选式地拍摄一些七秒的有趣的视频。很多人拍下来的素材远远比要编辑的甚至是看到的还要多很多。谷歌用人工智能似乎解决了这个问题。

你必须相信Clips的人工智能。有一个按钮你可以让它拍摄你想要拍的东西，但如果你用了，你应该就可以离开你的手机了。Clips的背后没有屏幕，你看不到它看到的东西。如果你排一个三秒的特写或者允许它识别谷歌照片库里的照片，它可以识别到重要的人脸。

Clips怎么知道什么东西有趣呢？谷歌回应说他们用了三年去研究人们用照相机做什么。然后雇用了三位专家（一位纪录片制作人，一位摄影记者和一位艺术摄影师）来训练Clips识别好的素材。这三位专家训练Clips寻找有趣的面孔，尤其是孩子的和猫狗的。

至于隐私问题，谷歌回应说他们考虑过这个问题。首先，Clips没有录音功能。当它处于工作状态的时候，LED灯会亮起来，告诉你它正在拍摄。此外，Clips不会通过网络自动传输照片。所有的照片和视频只能在得到你的允许之后离开相机。但是即使如此，仍然有很多人对隐私问题表示担忧。太空探索技术公司CEO、特斯拉公司CEO以及太阳城公司董事长Elon Musk在谷歌去年十月份推出Clips的时候就在推特上发表过评价：“This doesn’t even *seem* innocent.”

Translated and edited by Shan Qiqing

April 5, 2018

Keywords: Google, Clips, camera.

You may also like:

1.Google Clips camera, aimed at parents, can't compete with GoPro

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/02/27/google-clips-camera-aimed-parents-cant-compete-gopro/374940002/

2.Google Clips is a tiny camera that watches everything, then figures out what to capture using A.I.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/04/google-clips-ai-powered-camera.html

3. Google Clips camera is now selling for $249

https://mashable.com/2018/01/27/google-clips-on-sale-249-perfect-pictures/#uFqjdAsKUaq8

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