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Beautification modes, especially those supposedly powered by advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning, have become one of the selling points of many Android smartphones and custom experiences. It has always been an important feature in China and many Asian countries, but the trend has also spread to the rest of the world over time. Now Google is pushing against that fad and has created and implemented guidelines that will, in effect, allow you to see your true self when taking a selfie. At least until you enable that beauty mode yourself.
It was already rumored that Google was moving to not allow such selfie filters to be activated by default on Android, but now the tech giant not only confirms it, but also agrees. It all comes down to the welfare of the users, especially their own image. Like the models in advertisements and magazines, it portrays an overly idealized version of yourself and sets an unrealistic standard that does more harm than good.
For this reason, Google’s human-centric guidelines suggest that face retouching features should be turned off by default. That will be true for Google’s own Camera app on this year’s Pixel lineup. Whether that will be implemented in older Pixel phones is still unknown.
The guidelines do not completely prohibit facial retouching, but must be explicitly enabled by the user. It should also be quite obvious, through some UI or notification, that what the user is seeing is a modified version of their face, not how they actually look, much less how they should look. He also recommends a subtle change in the language of the feature’s name and icon, moving away from anything that suggests it’s meant to make them look gorgeous, suggesting that they aren’t yet.
Google isn’t enforcing these guidelines, however, so those beauty modes on other Android phones aren’t going away anytime soon. However, you are saying that you are already in communication with partners to put these guidelines into practice to help users have a better self-image, especially during these depressing times when they are likely to take more selfies than usual. habitual.