Ever since Google first demoed its smart object removal feature back at I/O in 2017, we’ve been dying to get our hands on it. After some setbacks and more than four years of waiting, it’s finally arrived as Magic Eraser on the Pixel 6 series. Reviewers are technically not allowed to share photo samples from the new phones just yet, but the first example has already surfaced, and it’s not especially good news.

Tech journalist Kate Bevan took to Twitter (the tweet has now been deleted) to share her first go at using Magic Eraser, and it’s safe to say that we might have expected better results. She attempts to remove two cars from behind the subject in this shot, and Google’s algorithm has a hard time deciding what to do with the background once they’re gone.

In all fairness, this is a particularly complex situation, since there are bushes, trees, and grass that all come together with the side of the road in the space vacated by the cars — there’s a lot going on and a lot of guesswork on Google’s part, so it’s somewhat understandable that this one didn’t come out so well. I’m sure Magic Eraser will work better in scenarios where there’s a fairly uniform background, like the sky and sand at a beach. Even so, this outlines the limitations of the technology, and it's good to know when we can and can't expect it to be useful.

As well as trying out the object removal tool, Bevan also added some blur to the same original photo, and the results there are mixed too. You can see around the subject’s back that the processing hasn’t quite figured out the outline and applied the blur to all of the right parts of the background. This is particularly clear when looking at the yellow line on the road. We can only hope that this is pre-release software and that Google will be working to refine these tools before the Pixel 6 starts arriving in the hands of consumers.

It’s clear that the Magic Eraser will only be so magic, but we’ll need to wait to see a lot more examples before we can really pass judgment. We’ll have in-depth reviews of both the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro coming up soon, so be sure to check those out for much more on this and all of the other new camera features. In the meantime, check out our hands-on coverage to see what we make of the hardware so far (Pixel 6, 6 Pro).

UPDATE: 2021/10/20 11:31 EST BY WILL SATTELBERG

Second impressions

A Reddit user on r/GooglePixel managed to get their hands on a demo unit at Best Buy, giving us some extra insight into how the phone works — and another Magic Eraser example. This time, it's a much more impressive look at the feature, as some nearby employees and customers vanish from the scene.

It's not perfect — you can undoubtedly tell parts of the image have been edited, and a couple of the removed individuals leave behind shadows on the floor. This example was also recorded off of the phone itself, so it's hard to look for those tiny details. That said, it looks to be a lot more impressive than our initial first glance. We'll have to try it out for ourselves to really get a feel for it.

Thanks: Shane Milton