The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2024–2025
Pixel 9's Add Me merges two shots so the photographer appears in the group photo
Google Pixel 9's Add Me: shoot the group, swap places, shoot again — AR guides the framing and on-device AI merges both so nobody is left out.
What it had to solve
The person behind the camera is always missing from family and group photos, and parents are usually the ones left out. Google's camera teams wanted a way to get everyone in one shot without a tripod, a timer, or asking a stranger.
How it works
Launched with the Pixel 9 phones at Made by Google in August 2024, Add Me solves a familiar problem: the person behind the camera is never in the photo. Google's own write-up traces the idea to the plight of the parent photographer — always the one missing from family pictures.
The mechanic is two shots and one merge. First you photograph the group, then you hand the phone to someone else and step into the frame; a real-time AR overlay of the first image, built with Google's XR team, guides the second photographer to match the composition. On-device machine-learning models powered by the Tensor G4's TPU then blend both pictures into a single photo where everyone, photographer included, appears.
Software engineer Adi Zicher pitched the idea in August 2022 and worked on it solo for about a year before product manager Maayan Rossmann joined to ship it. The team also discovered a playful side effect: 'twinning' — merging two photos of the same person — became one of the first things people tried at Google's demo.
Why it lands
- It targets a universal emotional pain — being the one who is never in the photo — rather than adding a pro-level feature.
- AR framing turns the hardest part, aligning two shots, into an intuitive two-step flow anyone can follow.
- Running the ML models on the Tensor G4's TPU kept latency low enough that the blend feels instant.
- The same mechanic doubles as a shareable 'twinning' effect, giving the feature a hook beyond its practical use.
What it did
Add Me became one of the Pixel 9's tentpole camera features, was one of the first things people tried in Google's Made by Google demo, and its 'twinning' side effect — merging two shots of the same person — spread through holiday and family photos.
What you can take
Turn a technically hard problem into a visual flow: AR guiding the second frame makes a complex AI merge feel like pointing the camera twice.
Since then
Add Me shipped with the Pixel 9 family and was quickly adopted for family gatherings and holiday photos; Google noted how often the photos its own employees shared used the feature. The engineering story — two photos merged in-camera with AR and a TPU — became a talking point for Pixel's on-device AI, and the twinning trend it enabled gave the feature a viral second life.
Sources
- How we built Pixel's Add Me feature for easier group photos
- 9 things to know about Pixel 9 cameras
- Google on how Pixel 9's Add Me camera uses AR, TPU
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