Most of the time, the topic of AI is centered around very narrow applications of the technology, such as a chatbot or image generation. But Apple’s Photos app has three AI features that quietly succeed in meeting very common user needs, even if you don’t know those features are AI-powered.
Three AI features in Apple Photos
I’d guess that the majority of iPhone users with Apple Intelligence support have no idea that the Photos app includes three AI features.
Those features, however, have been around since October and you’ve almost certainly used at least one.
The three features are:
- Clean Up to remove unwanted objects from photos
- On-demand Memory movie creation
- and natural language search that really works
Each of these provides meaningful utility inside Apple’s Photos app without screaming “AI.”
They’re perhaps some of the best examples yet of Apple Intelligence living up to its branding of being “AI for the rest of us.”
Photos uses Apple Intelligence to serve common user needs
Sometimes with new tech that emerges, including AI advancements, there’s this moment of: “That’s cool, but how will it make my life better?”
Tech advancements might impress, but at the end of the day they don’t always serve human needs.
Apple’s Photos app, however, uses AI to do things that users actually want.
Out of the billions of iPhone users, how many of us have taken a photo that had one element we wished we could remove? Maybe a person in the background, our finger covering a tiny bit of the lens, or some other out-of-place object.
I’d bet the vast majority of iPhone users have experienced those moments. And now, Clean Up takes care of the issue. By opening the Edit menu then tapping Clean Up, you can easily bring that imperfect photo just a little closer to perfection.
Many of us like to enjoy photo slideshows, too, but don’t want to put the work in to manually create one.
For years, the Photos app has provided a form of automatic slideshow creation with its Memory feature. But with AI, you can have Memory movies made on demand, fitting your exact instructions.
Then there’s the final AI feature: search.
This one isn’t sexy, but it’s a new AI capability that I expect most of us have used without even realizing AI was behind it.
With ever-expanding libraries of thousands of photos and videos, it’s more important than ever for search to work well.
Before AI, Apple Photos had lackluster search. But with AI, search is so much better than ever—and more user-friendly too.
Wrap-up
The Photos app’s Apple Intelligence features may not be huge, society-altering achievements. But they do make the experience using an iPhone better.
They make it easier to relive or find your precious captured memories. They can improve your photos by removing unwanted elements. Overall, they may not grab your attention, but does AI always have to?
What do you think of the AI features in Apple’s Photos app? Let us know in the comments.
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