Here's how Google brought Add Me's photo composition magic to the Pixel 9

Camera software on smartphones is so good — and has been really good for such a long time — that it can easily start to feel like everything worth doing has already been done. But every once in a while we get a welcome surprise, like we did last year with Add Me on Pixel 9 phones, the incredibly satisfying AI-powered composition tool that let you add subjects to your pics, one by one. As we wait to see if Add Me will make its way to any other Pixel models, Google’s offering a peek behind the curtain, as the company shares the story behind Add Me’s creation.

We first learned about Add Me last summer, in the months leading up to the Pixel 9 launch, but the feature’s genesis dates all the way back to the summer of 2022, when Google software engineer Adi Zicher complained about problems with group pictures always seeming to have somebody missing. There was a lot of enthusiasm among his fellow brainstormers, and after tinkering away on the concept for months, Zicher finally had a demo ready to share.

Now working with fellow Googler Maayan Rossmann, Zicher had started too late for this project to be ready in time for the Pixel 8, but the Pixel 9 made perfect sense as a target. We shouldn’t be surprised to hear that the effort crossed boundaries between a number of different groups within Google, from Zicher’s own Creative Camera to the Pixel Camera and Google XR teams. The latter’s expertise with augmented reality solutions is what ultimately led to the viewfinder experience we got with Add Me, using our existing shot as a reference as we add more and more subjects.

Even with the technical details being worked out, it wasn’t entirely clear just how fast this system would be, as seamlessly introducing new people to a photo takes a fair bit of number-crunching under the hood. Google credits the Pixel 9’s Tensor G4 chip and its 3rd-generation TPU as making Add Me practical for on-device deployment.

This is all really neat to learn about, but those final thoughts do leave us a little nervous about the chances of Add Me making its way to older hardware. The Pixel 8 with its Tensor G3 is at least similarly equipped, but we wonder if Google might consider a cloud-powered alternative on older phones. For now, the ball is in Google’s court.