What's the point of "perfect" snapshots?

Why AI images of your own life will steal your stories and mess with your memory.

I’m a Samsung user. I switched from Apple several years ago after they tried to make me pay to listen to my own music for a third time. First I ripped CD’s I’d already bought onto iTunes so I could listen to them on my iPod. Then I got an iPhone and they told me I needed to pay £25 to listen to the CD’s I’d already bought and ripped on my new device. Then they introduced Apple Music and told me I’d need to pay £10/month to listen to the CD’s I had already bought, ripped and paid to listen on multiple devices. At that point I was out.

Anyway, I digress. I’m a Samsung user and thus was served up various clips from their recent Unpacked event at which they launched all their new doodahs and widgets and this particular “innovation” caught my eye:

The purpose of a “snapshot”

What’s the purpose of a snapshot? I use the word snapshot specifically because a photograph can be any number of things. It can be a cover image for a magazine, an element in a mixed media collage, a piece of digital art. However, most of us are not using our smartphones to make art but to take snapshots of memorable moments; nights out, baby’s first words, first steps, first prom. Snapshots are moments in a life, in time, that will serve as a record of their experiences as they happened.

But what is the purpose of a snapshot that never actually happened? An idealised portrait of what one may wish happened but never did? What will it do to our memories and sense of self? Am I really a dog lover or did it just fit the aesthetic (see Samsung demo inserting a dog into a pic above)?

Of course we all want the best possible pictures of our selves and our loved ones but what do we mean by “best”? For persons of my vintage (born in 1979), it’s a rite of passage to bring a girlfriend or boyfriend home to meet the parents and for them to pluck a dusty photo album off the shelf and walk them through all the embarrassing shots of your youth. Not the perfect, airbrushed shots of you posed perfectly in a five-star restaurant with a fake dog on your lap but the one of you as a baby in the bath with your siblings, your hair shampooed up in to a mohawk. The one of you as a toddler, bawling into the lens with a tell tale ice cream melting on the floor at your feet. The one of you as a teenager with curtains and braces and acne attempting to look like a grown up in your oversized prom suit.

These pictures have stories, personality and, most importantly of all, the authenticity of imperfection. They are the real you, in development, trying out different fashions and hairstyles, friends and partners, until you work out who you really are or could be. If you’re looking for a reason why young people don’t drink now it’s partly because they cannot afford to ever lose control in case it’s caught on camera and ruins their lives. Turns out it was an unknown privilege to grow up in private.

The Value of Imperfection

When my mum was growing up in the 1950s no one she knew owned a camera. There was only way to get your picture taken and that was by the school on picture day or church on confirmation day but that still cost money that my maternal grandparents didn’t have. Consequently there exists only four pictures of my mum as a child but this one is my favourite.

This is the most treasured picture I own because of it’s imperfection. Can you spot it? For picture day my grandmother made sure my mum was dressed in her very best clothes, her “Sunday best” and yet, if you look at her right arm you’ll see there’s a hole in her cardigan. My mum’s family were so poor that even her best clothes had holes in them. AI could fix that but I’m glad it didn’t because that hole is a testament to how far she (and my father) have come since the poverty of their youth. It demonstrates her grit and resolve, it speaks to every obstacle she has overcome to become the incredible woman she is today.

Have I ever used a filter? Of course, and if your skin or hair makes you too self-conscious to post go ahead and use one too. AI is not about binaries, it’s about grey areas, and you need to decide for yourself where the line between subtle enhancement and outright illusion exists. Just remember though, when you are looking back through those photos in years to come, questioning your sanity because the images contradict your own recollections - perfection rarely makes for a great memory or a great story.

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To Do List

My recommendations for new things to read, watch, look at, listen to and do this week:

• Power Tools is a brand new, beautifully designed zine from writer and designer Bart Fish, “critiquing AI Toolmen and the myriad of ethical issues generative AI has created or amplified.” I have just ordered my first issue, you should too at https://powertoolsofai.com/.

• The Bride is a feminist masterpiece drawing on the tradition of murderous road movies such as Bonnie & Clyde, Badlands and Natural Born Killers. Brilliantly shot (way better that Del Toro’s Frankenstein #sorrynotsorry ) it fully deserves to be seen in the cinema.

• I couldn’t even get in to see Singaporean blues rock rebels Emperor Niño at either of their gigs this weekend so had to content myself with listening to their 2025 debut album Sedementary Blues, which sounds like it should have come out of the amber deserts of Utah rather than the urban jungle of Singapore.

Right, that’ll do ya!