Apple Inc. is planning a significant overhaul of the native photo editing capabilities on iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices, heavily leveraging artificial intelligence to narrow the competitive gap with Android rivals.
According to individuals familiar with the matter, Apple is developing a new suite of tools powered by its intelligence platform for the iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 systems slated for release this autumn.
This set of features will utilize on-device AI models to enable users to expand images, enhance quality, and recompose shots. These AI-driven processes are typically completed within seconds, the sources indicated.
In the realm of AI-powered photo editing, Apple is currently playing catch-up. Alphabet's Google has for years offered advanced AI editing tools on its Pixel devices, including features like Magic Eraser, Photo Unblur, and generative expansion. Samsung Electronics, which uses the Android operating system, has also aggressively integrated AI image editing capabilities into its Galaxy smartphone series.
Currently, the editing functions within Apple's Photos app are divided into four main sections: Adjust, Filters, Crop, and Retouch. Among these, only the Retouch feature is AI-driven, allowing users to remove unwanted objects from a scene.
In the upcoming system updates, Apple will introduce a dedicated 'Apple Intelligence Tools' section within the editing interface. This new area will consolidate four key functions: image expansion, quality enhancement, composition readjustment, and object removal.
Image Expansion: This tool can automatically generate extended imagery beyond the original photo's borders. For instance, after taking a close-up shot of a landmark, users can employ the tool to fill in the surrounding environment. Users will be able to manually slide the image edges to customize the expansion area.
Quality Enhancement: This feature uses AI to automatically optimize a photo's color, lighting, and overall image quality.
Composition Readjustment: Primarily designed for Spatial Photos (the 3D image format created for the Vision Pro headset), this tool allows for perspective adjustment after a photo is taken. For example, a head-on photo of a car could be subtly shifted to a more side-focused perspective.
However, the development of these new features has not been without challenges. Several internal testers reported that the image expansion and composition readjustment tools currently suffer from instability. Apple may potentially delay the release or streamline these functions based on the optimization progress of the underlying AI models.
Apple's first AI photo editing tool has already faced significant criticism. Since its introduction, numerous users have reported inconsistent performance with the object removal feature, frequently encountering issues like visual artifacts, image distortion, or unconvincing fill content.
This year's comprehensive system updates from Apple focus on two core areas: first, enhancing the Siri voice assistant to strengthen the Apple Intelligence ecosystem; and second, refining the underlying system architecture to improve performance. These optimizations are expected to extend battery life, reduce software bugs, and address stability issues that remained after last year's major visual redesign.
Concurrently, Apple is developing several complementary AI upgrades: launching a standalone Siri application, creating a new chatbot-like interface, opening the App Store to permit integration with third-party voice assistants, and upgrading Siri's command logic to handle multi-step requests within a single instruction.
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