Apple’s forthcoming iOS 18 is loaded with a slew of artificial-intelligence-powered capabilities. The brand new cellular OS can rewrite your textual content messages, summarize emails, and determine objects in photographs. However probably the most enjoyable options is Picture Playground, which generates cartoonlike illustrations primarily based on a textual content immediate.
Whereas Apple has proven examples of its output throughout its keynotes, demos, and product movies, we’ve but to see a real-world instance of an Picture Playground character till now. Apple has shared with WIRED the first-ever instance created by Picture Playground that it has proven outdoors of its prerecorded keynotes and advertising and marketing supplies.
This picture of an lovely small canine sporting a celebration hat and smiling behind a birthday cake is not simply any random pup. Her title is Bailey, and he or she belongs to Craig Federighi, senior vp of software program engineering at Apple, who created the picture for his spouse in honor of Bailey’s current birthday.
Federighi referenced the illustration throughout his interview with WIRED’s Lily Hay Newman about Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, the safe server atmosphere the corporate constructed to deal with AI job requests that can’t be processed on a client’s system. Apple reps shared it later. It is WIRED coverage to obviously determine any AI-generated photographs we publish, in order that’s why you see the watermark on the picture.
Picture Playground is debuting at a time when generative AI instruments have been creeping into software program from all the most important tech corporations, as Microsoft, Google, and Meta have launched AI-powered software program that focuses on productiveness and creativity. Whereas Apple’s method in iOS 18 additionally prioritizes the sensible facet of AI, the corporate has included some purely enjoyable apps too—Picture Playground being a primary instance.
It exists as a stand-alone app, however you may also entry it by way of Messages. To generate a picture, you possibly can both sort an outline of what you wish to see, select a photograph of somebody out of your photograph library, or choose from some preloaded ideas. It’s also possible to choose between three kinds: Illustration, Sketch, and Animation. The function is to not be confused with Genmoji, which lets you generate customized emoji straight from the keyboard utilizing textual content prompts.
Since neither of those generative AI options can be found in beta simply but (though a number of different Apple Intelligence options are with the iOS 18.1 developer beta), the one examples we have seen of Picture Playground’s and Gemoji’s output have been tightly managed by Apple. Till the options are launched, Federighi’s lovely canine is the closest we’ll get to seeing an instance that exists past industrially produced and edited advertising and marketing supplies. And I might say it is a fairly good one, and positively not as creepy because the examples we noticed throughout the keynote at WWDC. Good job, Craig.
WIRED’s Lily Hay Newman contributed reporting to this story.
Replace: September 11, 2024, at 7:33 pm EDT. This story was modified so as to add the title of Federighi’s canine.
