Apple Intelligence Can Help Create AI Artwork for Apple Music Playlists
Apple Intelligence — the suite of artificial intelligence (AI) features coming to a handful of compatible devices next year — could power a new feature in Apple Music, the company’s music streaming service. Apple Intelligence, which was introduced on June 10 at the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), is expected to power several other AI features in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia. While multiple developer beta updates have rolled out to developers thus far, none have brought access to these AI features. Now, code discovered in the recently released iOS 18 Developer Beta 4 update hints at a new feature that Apple hasn’t shown off: the ability to create AI album art for Apple Music playlists.
Apple working on AI images for Apple Music playlists
9to5Mac spotted code in iOS 18 Developer Beta 4 released on Tuesday, which contains strings referencing a feature that will allow users to generate AI artwork for playlists on Apple Music. It is speculated that it will come in the form of a Create Image button that appears while editing an existing playlist.
According to the publication, tapping the button will open Image Playground — the company’s text-to-image AI tool that’s part of Apple Intelligence. When invoked, the iPhone could then ask the user what kind of image they’d like to generate, presenting options such as animation, illustration, or sketch. This is merely speculation, however, as Apple has yet to confirm the presence of such a feature in iOS 18.
The AI feature is reportedly in development and isn’t available to beta testers. Apple initially announced that eligible devices in select languages would get support for Apple Intelligence later this year, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman recently suggested that those features — including the various Siri upgrades Apple has unveiled — may be delayed until 2025.
In his newsletter, Gurman claimed that the iPhone maker is targeting a spring 2025 launch, while Apple has not yet announced when it will roll out these features to users.
The journalist also revealed that the Cupertino tech company could make Apple Intelligence features available to developers for testing and debugging via the iOS 18.4 update in January 2025.
However, the alleged delay in the Apple Intelligence rollout doesn’t necessarily mean that AI features won’t be available to iPhone users in 2024. Some of Apple’s announced features, such as text generation and formatting tools powered by ChatGPT — OpenAI’s popular conversational chatbot — are still expected to be on track for rollout later this year.
