In a bid to catch up with Android AI features, Apple is reportedly building a suite of photo-editing tools that will debut in iOS 27 later this year. The tools will lean “heavily” on artificial intelligence.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that the company is developing the new tools powered by Apple Intelligence for iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27. The new tools would allow you to “extend, enhance and reframe images” using on-device AI, with processing only taking a few seconds.
Apparently, these new tools are meant to catch up with Google and Samsung offerings. Google already offers Magic Eraser, Photo Unblur and generative image expansion on Pixel devices and some Android ones. In recent years, Samsung has taken to keeping the cameras on the Galaxy phones the same but offering improvements via AI editing and upscaling.
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Apple, meanwhile, currently only has one AI-powered tool: Clean Up, which lets you remove objects in photos.
(Image credit: Tom’s Guide)
Per Gurman, Apple will add a new “Apple Intelligence Tools” section to the photo editing interface. Some named tools include Enhance, Extend, Reframe and new Clean Up features.
Enhance uses AI to improve color, lighting and the overall image quality. Extend will generate additional images beyond the original photo’s frame. This seems similar to the generative photo creator available for Android.
Reframe is meant for spatial photos, the 3D image format meant for the Vision Pro. The tool would let you shift perspective after a photo is taken.
Finally, Clean Up will get improvements since the current version can produce wonky results. As an example, I recently used the tool to remove a dog licking its rear from a photo. The resulting fill was distorted, and it was clear that a dog-shaped something was there before.
Gurman reports that development hasn’t been smooth. Apparently, the Extend and Reframe tools don’t perform reliably right now. That said, Apple has several months before iOS 27 debuts this fall.
It’s not clear if the new tools are using any Gemini models as part of the new Apple and Google AI partnership that should finally introduce Siri 2.0.
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