Apple wants to keep smartphone photos true to reality and doesn’t want them to look like competitors like Google’s Magic Editor.
During an interview with wall street journal Regarding Apple Intelligence, Craig Federighi, the company’s senior vice president of software engineering, said, “It’s important to us to help provide accurate information, not fantasy.”
But that didn’t stop Apple from rolling out Clean Up for iOS 18.1, a feature in the Photos app that lets users remove objects from images.
“There was a lot of internal discussion,” Federighi explains. “Would you like to be able to easily remove that water bottle or microphone because that water bottle was there when you took the photo?”
Federighi said there was “extremely high” demand for an editing tool that removes “irrelevant details” that don’t “fundamentally change the meaning” of an image.
But Federighi said Apple is concerned about the technology, which has a “great history,” and its impact on photography.
“The reality is how people view photographic content as trustworthy, and our products, mobile phones, are used frequently and we believe we can help provide accurate information rather than fantasy. It’s important to us,” Federighi said.
When changes are made to a photo, the metadata is updated to clearly mark the changes.
Cleanup is available in iOS 18, but iPhone users won’t be able to add AI-generated elements to images like Samsung and Google users can.
in PetaPixel In his review of the Google Pixel 9 Pro, editor-in-chief Jaron Schneider said the following when using Magic Edtior: Realistic. It would definitely be possible to pass them off as real to many ordinary people. ”
As these types of AI capabilities proliferate across different platforms and devices, the debate over what is and is not a photo will continue.
Clean Up is part of Apple Intelligence, which was highly touted at the launch of iPhone 16. The first device built “from the ground up” for artificial intelligence. However, until now Apple’s AI capabilities have been lacking.
“When you put something out there, there can be some kind of chaos. Apple’s perspective is more like, ‘Let’s get each piece right and then release it when it’s ready.’ ,” Federighi adds.
