AI Comes For That All-Important Christmas Card Photo.

Every summer I beg my family to pose for a group shot on the beach wearing Santa hats.

It would be such a cute Christmas card picture, I insist.

They stubbornly refuse to cooperate, so I’m stuck trying to get that perfect picture four weeks before Christmas.

It never works. Someone closes their eyes, someone looks away, someone else frowns.

As we move into the holiday season lots of folks have the same simple dream. They long for a single family photograph where the whole gang is looking at the camera. Smiling in unison and in matching clothes without stains. And wouldn’t it be nice if the family dog wasn’t admiring his private parts at the very moment the shutter clicks?

Too much to ask?

Not any more.

The Wall Street Journal’s tech editor, Nicole Nguyen wrote a piece yesterday headlined, “I Fixed My Bad Family Photos. Here’s How to Do It—and When to Stop. New AI-powered tools from Google, Adobe, Apple and others can improve group shots and fun selfies. They can also make them terrifying.”

With a few clicks, she showed how you can open closed eyes, plaster a smile over a scowl and eliminate photo-bombers. It’s like having a digital fairy godmother with a wand made of pixels.

She posted several photos of herself - before and after- and they were genuinely impressive.

However, when she tried to fix the facial expressions in a group photo, the technology failed. Faces melted and eyes were misaligned. In a “fixed” black and white childhood photo one kid looked like a space alien.

Looks like the technology that celebrities have been using for years to make themselves look human is now available to the rest of us.

I didn’t seriously flirt with the idea of using the apps until I saw Nguyen’s final picture. A bland shot of a couple. Then the retouched one.

A red parka! Snow! Best of all, a Santa hat!

AI comes to the annual Christmas card. And I’m here for it.