New tech from my old Google teammates makes some exciting claims:
Using Magic Insert we are, for the first time, able to drag-and-drop a subject from an image with an arbitrary style onto another target image with a vastly different style and achieve a style-aware and realistic insertion of the subject into the target image.
Here is a demo that you can access on the desktop version of the website. We’re excited by the options Magic Insert opens up for artistic creation, content creation and for the overall expansion of GenAI controllability. pic.twitter.com/HhbfrEfXZH
— Nataniel Ruiz (@natanielruizg) July 3, 2024
Of course, much of the challenge here—where art meets science—is around identity preservation: to what extent can & should the output resemble the input? Here it’s subject to some interpretation. In other applications one wants an exact copy of a given person or thing, but optionally transformed in just certain ways (e.g. pose & lighting).
When we launched Firefly last year, we showed off some of Adobe’s then-new ObjectStitch tech for making realistic composites. It didn’t ship while I was there due to challenges around identity preservation. As far as I know those challenges remain only partially solved, so I’ll continue holding out hope—as I have for probably 30 years now!—for future tech breakthroughs that get us all the way across that line.

