Apple's new iOS 18 developer beta includes an artificial intelligence (AI) feature called Clean Up, which uses the magic of machine learning to remove items from your photos and tidy them up. If you think it sounds a lot like Google's Magic Eraser, you'd be right, but some early tests show that iPhones are still playing catch-up to their Pixel rivals.
To use the Clean Up feature, you must have downloaded iOS 18.1 beta 3 on your iPhone. Once you've done that, open the Photos app, choose an image, and start editing it. You'll see a new Clean Up button. The feature suggests items that can be removed from the image, or you can draw over an object with your finger and Clean Up will get to work.
The problem is that the results, at least in the initial beta, are a bit inaccurate. While Clean Up seems to do a good job of removing objects, it struggles to convincingly fill in the blank spaces left behind once the selected object is gone, something a comparison thread by @sondesix on X (formerly Twitter) illustrates pretty well.
Compare that to Google Photos, which also has its own AI-powered image cleanup tool called Magic Editor along with Magic Eraser. This one is also good at isolating and removing objects from images, but right now it seems to do a better job of replacing the deleted item with realistic AI-generated content.
Unlike Apple's Clean Up tool (which works entirely on-device), Magic Editor also lets you choose between several different results, allowing you to pick the best one and not have to rely on just one AI-created result.
Apple is trying to catch up
Since Apple’s Clean Up tool is clearly a few steps behind competitors from Google and others, it’s tempting to wonder whether Apple Intelligence’s other features are up to par. Having tested a few of them (most on macOS, admittedly), I can say that Apple Intelligence is a bit of a mixed bag right now, with some features impressive while others are disappointing — or not yet available.
This is all uncharted territory for Apple, so it's not surprising to see it trying to find its feet. We shouldn't be too hard on Clean Up, as it's still in beta and could see some significant improvements in the coming weeks and months.
We've seen reports that many Apple Intelligence features could be delayed until the new year, so it shouldn't be too surprising to see that one of them (Clean Up) needs a bit more work before it's ready. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has also suggested that Clean Up could even receive a “beta” label in the Photos app, for starters.
At the same time, Apple has said that most of its Apple Intelligence features run on-device, meaning your information isn’t sent to Apple’s servers. That’s much better for your privacy compared to rival services, but it could limit the capabilities of features like Clean Up and perhaps partly explains why it’s a bit behind its rivals.
Or it could simply be because Apple needs to catch up with rivals like Google, which has been developing AI features like this for years. Whatever the case, in the coming months and years we'll find out whether Apple can close the gap and improve its AI tools, all while preserving user privacy.
