iOS 18’s new Clean Up tool shows Apple is still lagging far behind the Google Pixel’s AI photo tricks
Apple’s new iOS 18 developer beta includes an artificial intelligence (AI) feature called Clean Up, which uses machine learning wizardry to remove elements from your photos and tidy them up. If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like Google’s Magic Eraser, you’d be right – but early test runs show the iPhones still lag behind their Pixel rivals.
To use the Clean Up feature, you’ll need to have iOS 18.1 beta 3 downloaded to your iPhone. Once that’s done, open the Photos app, choose a photo, and begin editing it. You’ll then notice a new Clean Up button. The feature will suggest elements to remove from the photo, 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 early beta, are somewhat mixed. While Clean Up seems to do a decent job of removing objects, it struggles to convincingly fill in the gaps left behind once the selected object is gone – something that a @sondesix comparison thread on X (formerly Twitter) illustrates this nicely.
Compare that to Google Photos, which also has its own AI-powered image cleaning tool called Magic Editor, in addition to Magic Eraser. It’s also good at isolating and removing objects from images, but right now it seems to do a better job of replacing the removed item with realistic AI-generated content.
Unlike Apple’s Clean Up tool (which works entirely on the device itself), Magic Editor also lets you choose from multiple results. This way, you can always select the best one and you’re not dependent on a single AI-generated outcome.
Apple is lagging behind
With Apple’s Clean Up tool clearly a few steps behind competitors from Google and elsewhere, it’s tempting to ask whether other Apple Intelligence features are up to par. Having tried a few myself (mostly on macOS, admittedly), I can say that Apple Intelligence is a bit of a mixed bag at the moment, with some features impressive while others are disappointing – or aren’t available yet.
This is all uncharted territory for Apple, so it’s not surprising that it’s trying to find its feet. We shouldn’t judge Clean Up too harshly, as it’s still in beta and could see significant improvements in the coming weeks and months.
We’ve seen reports that many Apple Intelligence features may be delayed until the new year, so we shouldn’t be too shocked if we see that one of them (Clean Up) still needs some work before it’s ready. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has also suggested that Clean Up could even be labeled ‘beta’ in the Photos app initially.
At the same time, Apple has said that most Apple Intelligence features will run on-device, meaning none of your information will be sent to Apple’s servers. That’s much better for your privacy compared to competing services, but it could limit the ability of features like Clean Up and perhaps explains why it lags a little behind its rivals.
Or it could simply be because Apple needs to catch up to rivals like Google, which have been developing these kinds of AI features for years. Either way, we’ll see in the coming months and years whether Apple can close the gap and improve its AI tools while still preserving user privacy.
