Apple plans major AI photo editing overhaul in iOS 27 to catch up with Google and Samsung

Apple Readies Photo-Editing Overhaul With New AI Tools in iOS 27

Apple Inc. is planning a major overhaul of the built-in photo-editing features for the iPhone, iPad and Mac, leaning heavily on artificial intelligence to better compete with Android devices. The company is developing a new suite of tools powered by its Apple Intelligence platform for iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27, slated for release this fall, according to people familiar with the matter. The features will allow users to extend, enhance and reframe images using on-device AI models. Processing typically takes a few seconds, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven't been announced. A spokesperson for the Cupertino, California-based company declined to comment. Apple is playing catch-up in this area. Alphabet Inc.'s Google has offered advanced AI photo-editing capabilities on its Pixel devices for years, including tools like Magic Eraser, Photo Unblur and generative image expansion. Samsung Electronics Co., which relies on Google's Android operating system, has also pushed aggressively into AI editing with its Galaxy smartphone lineup. Today, Apple's Photos app offers four primary editing options: Adjust, Filters, Crop and Clean Up. The last of those is the company's only AI-powered tool, enabling users to remove objects from images. In the upcoming software, the company is adding a new "Apple Intelligence Tools" section to the editing interface. It includes the Extend, Enhance, Reframe and Clean Up features. * The Extend option lets users generate additional image content beyond the original frame. For example, someone could take a close-up photo of a landmark and use the tool to fill in surrounding scenery. Users can control how much is added -- and where -- by expanding the edges of the image with their fingers. * Enhance uses AI to automatically improve color, lighting and overall image quality. * Reframe is designed primarily for spatial photos -- Apple's 3D image format built for the Vision Pro headset. It allows users to shift perspective after the shot is taken. A photo of a car, for instance, could be adjusted from a front-facing view to emphasize the side. Development of the features hasn't gone entirely smoothly, though. The Extend and Reframe tools don't perform reliably during internal testing, according to several people who have used them. Apple could theoretically delay or scale back the features depending on improvements to its underlying models. The company is already facing criticism over its first AI editing tool. Since its debut, users have complained that Clean Up can produce inconsistent results -- sometimes leaving behind artifacts, distorting images or filling removed areas with inaccurate details. Apple's broader software updates will focus on two main priorities this year. First, the company is looking to improve the Siri voice assistant and expand other parts of Apple Intelligence. Second, it's seeking to refine its operating systems to boost performance. That effort should help extend battery life and reduce bugs following last year's more visually ambitious overhaul. Additional AI-related changes in development include a dedicated Siri app and a redesigned interface for the assistant that resembles a chatbot. Apple also will offer the ability to swap in rival voice agents via the App Store and an option for Siri to handle multiple commands within a single request.

iOS 27 will reportedly come with new AI-powered photo editing tools

Apple reportedly plans to fix bugs and expand the capabilities of Apple Intelligence with the release of iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 year, and it seems like tweaks to the company's AI could go beyond a more functional version of its Siri assistant. Bloomberg reports that this year's software updates will also include new AI-powered photo editing tools that will let users change things like the background and framing of images, too. You can currently use the Photos app across Apple's operating systems to adjust things like saturation and contrast, apply filters, crop photos or use AI to remove objects with the Clean Up tool. Clean Up will apparently be one of several "Apple Intelligence Tools" after these new updates roll out, Bloomberg writes. Along with Clean Up, users will be able to use "Extend" to expand the background of the photo with generative AI, "Enhance" to automatically improve things like lighting and image quality and "Reframe" to shift the perspective of a photo after it's taken, primarily for Apple's spatial photos. The new features, if released, will bring Apple's photo-editing tools more in line with competitors like Google and Samsung, though both companies still lap Apple in their willingness to create entirely generated images. Google's Magic Editor feature, which debuted in 2023, still takes the cake in terms of giving users leeway to radically add to and change their photos. Other than new photo tools, Apple is reportedly also debuting its new version of Siri powered by Google's Gemini models, a standalone Siri app and AI-powered search inside its apps. Apple will likely introduce many of these new features during its WWDC keynote on June 8.

iOS 27 reportedly getting AI photo editing 'overhaul' -- here's all the new features

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. Apple, meanwhile, currently only has one AI-powered tool: Clean Up, which lets you remove objects in photos. Four AI-based tools 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. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Subscribe to Tom's Guide on YouTube and follow us on TikTok.

Report: 3 new AI-powered photo editing features are coming to iPhones

A new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman gives us an idea of what to expect from iOS 27's photo-editing features. Apple is said to be planning a major overhaul of the photo-editing experience, leaning heavily on AI for three big new features: Extend, Enhance, and Reframe. These three tools will be collected together with the existing Clean Up tool in a new "Apple Intelligence Tools" section of the Photos app. According to the report, here's what to expect from the new features: Extend: Users will be able to "zoom out" on an existing photo, adding in details beyond the original frame. This sort of generative fill/expand feature is fairly commonplace. Enhance: You'll be able to improve color, lighting, and overall image quality using AI. Reframe: When taking spatial photos, this new feature will allow you to shift perspective to produce a still image from a different angle. Gurman notes that internal testing of the features hasn't gone smoothly. In particular, the Extend and Reframe tools produce inconsistent results, so they could be delayed. Getting reliably good results is already the biggest problem with Apple's only current AI-powered tool, Clean Up, so introducing more AI tools that don't work well much of the time is not going to improve Apple's reputation. In his report, Gurman reminds us that the OS 27 updates are focused on two main areas: Apple Intelligence features, including the long-overdue new Siri, and a concerted effort to clean up the codebase to improve performance and battery life while reducing bugs. Apple is expected to preview the new OS at the WWDC keynote on June 8.

Apple is finally building the AI Photo editor that Google and Samsung have had for years

Google's Photos app has been doing things that Apple's Photos app couldn't, for years, and the iPhone-maker has noticed. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, in his latest report, claims that iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 will come with a dedicated "Apple Intelligence Tools" section inside the Photos editing interface. The "Apple Intelligence Tools" section will include three new AI-powered photo-editing features: Extend, Enhance, and Reframe. Before we begin with what the features actually do, all of them will run entirely on-device, and, in a typical Apple fashion, complete their edits in seconds. What will the new Apple Intelligence photo editing tools do? Extend, as the name suggests, extends a picture's boundaries by generating new imagery and seamlessly stitching it to the existing one. You should be able to use the feature to add some surrounding to close-up shots or add some negative space to either side of the subject. Recommended Videos Enhance, on the other hand, works as a one-tap enhancement button, which immediately adjusts the color, lighting, and the overall image quality, without going through different editing options and fiddling with various sliders. Reframe is designed primarily for spatial photos captured for the Vision Pro headset. It lets users shift the perspective of a 3D image after it's already been taken, allowing you to move from a front-facing to a side-facing view. Is Apple actually ready to release all three features? Not at the moment, no. Per Gurman, both the Extend and Reframe features are producing inconsistent results in the internal testing. If the underlying AI models don't adapt or the results don't improve significantly before the September launch event, Apple might delay them or scale back. While I'm a big fan of the Apple Photos app myself, it currently offers only one AI-based editing feature, Clean Up, and that doesn't work as well as the feature does on other smartphones like the Galaxy S or the Pixel flagship series. I remember when Google released its Magic zeditor in 2023, and Samsung's Galaxy AI followed quite aggressively in the coming years. In response, the best Apple could come up with was Clean Up. In my opinion, Apple genuinely needs the Extend, Enhance, and Reframe features to work, and work in time for a showcase at the WWDC 2026 and a public release in September.

iPhone set for AI photo editing upgrade to match Google Pixel, but does anyone want it? | Stuff

Apple is planning to debut a trio of AI-based iPhone photo editing tools within iOS 27, according to a new report from the most credible Apple watcher, on Tuesday. The Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman says the next crop of Apple Intelligence features will include options to Extend, Enhance and Reframe photos. Enhance is the most noteworthy as it will work to generate new content beyond the frame of the original photo. This is similar to the Auto Frame technology available on Google Pixel devices, essentially generating a fake extension to the image you have captured. Enhance doesn't sound all that different to the current Auto Enhance feature. It'll tweak lighting, colours and other elements with AI instead of good old fashioned computational tech that does a decent enough job while still keeping the image looking like it was taken by a fella with a phone. Reframe is designed for Spatial Photos. Apple Intelligence will be used here to change the perspective of an image after it's taken. That might be the most impressive feature, but considering Spatial Photos can only be viewed in all their glory on the Vision Pro, it will have the most limited appeal. The features are likely to be greeted with a mixed reception. Whether by design or poor design, Apple has largely kept AI out of the iPhone photography experience until now. The only existing feature is Clean Up, which is designed to help users remove unwanted objects from their image. As MacRumors points out in its report, this doesn't work as well as similar features on Samsung and Google phones. If Apple does launch these features, we're likely to see them previewed at WWDC in June. However, Gurman says Apple is still working out the kinks and the features might end up being delayed until later in the release cycle.

Apple iOS 27 And macOS 27 To Overhaul AI-Driven Image Editing Capabilities, Potentially Leaving Android Competitors In The Dust

Apple is banking on the upcoming iOS 27 and macOS 27 updates to regain relevance in the edge AI sphere, with plans already underfoot to launch a new, highly capable, Gemini-backed, and wholly integrated chatbot-style Siri. Even so, Apple's ambitions for the upcoming updates are apparently much more expansive than previously believed, with the Cupertino-based tech giant now eyeing an unassailable lead in AI-driven photo-editing capabilities. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, with the upcoming iOS 27 and macOS 27 software updates, Apple will debut a dedicated "Apple Intelligence Tools" section within the Photos app, unlocking three new features. The "Extend" feature will use Apple Intelligence's on-device model to extrapolate additional details that might fit a given frame. For instance, "someone could take a close-up photo of a landmark and use the tool to fill in surrounding scenery." Users can then choose to retain a part of the extrapolated content by dragging the photo's edges with their fingers. As its name suggests, the "Enhance" feature will automatically adjust a given image's quality, lighting, and colors for an optimal result. Finally, the "Reframe" option will allow users to shift the perspective in spatial photos, which capture depth information as well for a 3D-like effect. Even so, Gurman has cautioned that the development of these new features, especially Extend and Reframe tools, has not progressed smoothly, and that Apple might be forced to delay their rollout if it fails to iron out lingering kinks. As we detailed recently, Apple's revamped chatbot Siri will run on Google's own TPUs and cloud infrastructure, albeit under Apple's ownership. The iPhone manufacturer insists that the arrangement would not result in a change in Apple's stringent privacy-related safeguards. According to the previous tidbits by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the Siri chatbot will be baked into Apple's software, allowing it to leverage personal data, perform in-app actions, search the web, generate content, including images, provide coding assistance, summarize and analyze information, as well as upload files. Apple is also designing a feature that will let the chatbot Siri view already-open windows and on-screen content, along with the ability to adjust device features and settings, and handle combo requests that combine several commands within a single prompt. The chatbot Siri will reportedly leverage a much more advanced version of Google's Gemini model, known internally as Apple Foundation Models version 11. According to Gurman, "the model is expected to be competitive with Gemini 3 and significantly more capable" than the one supporting the revamped Siri. Additionally, Siri will no longer be accessible solely via voice commands. Instead, Apple is debuting a dedicated Siri app with iOS 27, which would serve as a central repository of all past conversations with the AI assistant. The app will include an "Extensions" feature that would seamlessly connect to third-party agents such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude, allowing Siri to tap into the capabilities of these agents. The App Store will also sport a dedicated "Extensions" section from where users will be able to install all supported third-party agents. Also, while users can still activate Siri via voice commands or the power button, Apple is testing a new interface that resides within the Dynamic Island. Finally, Apple is attempting to replace its "Spotlight" search function with Siri, allowing for a unified search-related UI. The new search interface will continue to show "Siri Suggestions," which would span across apps, upcoming appointments, and changes to settings suggested by AI.