Apple’s Clean Up Tool: A Promising Yet Flawed Introduction To AI In Photos

Apple’s AI venture has had a rocky start so far. With the delayed rollout of Apple Intelligence features, the company’s AI efforts have been steamrolled by Google’s latest AI features in the Pixel 9 series. However, Apple is trying to mend its ways and it has offered another Apple Intelligence feature in the latest beta – Clean Up. This feature is similar to Google’s Magic Eraser and Samsung’s Object Eraser. I tried my hands on the new Clean Up tool and here’s how it works.

Note: Clean Up tool is only available in iOS 18.1 beta 3, iPadOS 18.1 Beta and macOS Sequoia 15.1 beta 3 as of now.

How to Use Apple Intelligence Clean Up Tool

Once you have updated your iPhone to iOS 18.1 beta 3, the Clean Up tool will be available by default in the Photos app. When you start using it for the first time, the tool will be downloaded. Here’s how to use the Clean Up tool on iPhone to remove unwanted objects from photos.

• Open a photo in the Photos app and tap on the edit button. Now, select Clean Up from the tools at the bottom.

You will be prompted to tap, circle, or brush on an object you want to remove. You can zoom in and out of the photo with the pinch gesture to use the tool properly.

• The selected object will be highlighted with a cool animation and then it will be removed from the photo.

You can also blur a person’s face by scribbling on it. To save the changes, tap on Done or you can choose Reset to revert the changes. There’s also an Undo arrow to undo the changes.

• You can also tap on the three-dot button on the top right to save a copy.

Apple Intelligence Clean Up Tool Is a Dud as of Now

First things first, the Clean Up tool in Apple Intelligence works completely on-device, unlike the equivalents by Google and Samsung which offer both cloud-based as well as on-device options. I tried comparing it with Google’s Magic Eraser and Samsung’s Object Eraser and the results were disappointing. While Clean Up detects objects in focus using depth mapping on all photos, the object segmentation is not up to the mark.

It works perfectly on simple images where unwanted objects are clearly visible or are not blending into the background. But in complex images, it fails to shine. For example, I tried the Clean Up tool on a photo of a group of people and tried to remove one person from it, but it botched the surroundings instead.

In comparison, the Magic Eraser and Object Eraser worked much better. One issue with the Clean Up tool is that the selection tool is too thick to select objects, especially if you want to select a small object.

After trying the tool on different images, the results were mostly underwhelming and the feature is buggy in its current state. One might argue that it’s a beta update and Apple Intelligence itself is in the beta phase currently, so to expect it to work as well as Magic Eraser and Object Eraser would not be fair.

I really hope that Apple polishes this feature to wrinkle out the pertaining bugs.