The upcoming release of Apple Intelligence has prompted the iPhone maker to ask the question “What is a photo?” Moment. In an interview with The Wall Street JournalApple software chief Craig Federighi said the company aims to provide AI-powered image editing tools that preserve the authenticity of photos.
“Our products, our phones, are used a lotsaid Federighi. “It is important to us that we help provide accurate information and not fantasies.”
“Do we want to make it easy to remove the water bottle or the microphone? Because that water bottle was there when you took the photo,” Federighi said after a demonstration of how to use Clean Up to remove objects from the background of an image. “The need for people to eliminate seemingly inconsequential details in the photo that don't fundamentally change the meaning of what was happening was very, very great, so we were willing to take this small step.”
Apple Intelligence doesn't allow users (at least for now) to add AI-generated manipulations to images like competing services do. Any images edited with the new Object Remover feature will also be marked as Modified with Cleanup in the Photos app and embedded with metadata to indicate that they have been modified.