I keep seeing these comerciales for this new google(?) phones that will remove background images in photos (like people and animals). How does the phone know what’s behind the images that are being removed? Have they just photographed every inch of the earth already?
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No, it just infills with a pattern that matches what’s at the edges. This means the result will be entirely fabricated and not match reality.
The trick here is that the phone doesn’t know what’s behind the image. It’s guessing, based off what is in the background and the idea that if you just put more of the existing background over the person you’re trying to erase, it will probably look okay? The ads you are seeing are for best case scenarios where adding more sand and more ocean or sky on a beach will look pretty normal.
It’s not that they’ve photographed every inch of the Earth. It’s that google has seen enough photographs to make a plausible prediction for what’s behind it.
So lets say you take a photo of yourself in the park and in the background there’s a dog sitting on the grass. It’s fairly easy to guess what should be behind the dog if cut out of the photo: more grass. There might not be grass behind the dog. There might be a second smaller dog standing behind the first. Fill that spot with grass though and no one will be the wiser.
Fun related fact: Everyone has [a blind spot where their optic nerve is](https://lifehacker.com/how-optical-illusions-trick-our-brains-1790829333). You never notice the blind spot because your brain makes reasonable assumptions for what would be there and fills in the hole much like google does.
It just basically replicates whatever is on either side of what’s being removed. If it’s person standing on a beach with sand, water, sky on either side it just replicates that. It’ll work a lot better in certain circumstances than others with more specific details.
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