In iOS 18, you’ll be able to use the power of Apple Intelligence to generate fun, relevant images in your Messages conversations. You can create brand new emoji and personalized artwork.
Apple calls the features Genmoji and Image Playground. “The Image Playground is going to make everyday conversations a whole lot more fun,” said Cyrus Irani, Apple’s Director of Human Interface.
With the Photos app, you can more easily search through the content of your photos and videos, and build custom memory videos without pilfering through your library by hand.
AI image generation in iMessage in iOS 18
Image: Apple
With the power of Apple Intelligence, a moniker given to Apple’s new machine learning-powered features that run on-device and in Apple’s private cloud, you can generate images in Messages on-the-fly.
That starts with Genmoji. From the keyboard, you can create a new emoji for when you can’t find the right one built-in. No ostrich emoji? No trombone emoji? No problem. Make your own and send it along. You can describe what you want and pick from a few different choices.
Apple Intelligence is all about personalized AI features. You can create Genmoji that resemble the people you’re talking to. “Because Apple Intelligence is aware of who’s in your photo library, you can simply pick someone and create a Genmoji that looks just like them.” Wish someone a happy birthday, and you can generate a cartoon image of them, specifically.
Genmoji can be sent as a sticker, a Tapback to a message, or sent in-line in your own message.
Image Playground will generate pictures and artwork
Photo: Apple
Image Playground makes image generation easy. As Irani specifically calls out, there’s “no need to engineer the perfect prompt.”
Choose from a large variety of starting concepts like genres (fantasy, disco, sci-fi), costumes (astronaut, royalty, superhero), accessories (flower crown, hard hat, sunglasses), places (city, stage, desert) and more. You can choose from three different art styles: a 3D render, 2D sketch or illustration. You can also type a description in if you have something particular in mind.
Because it all happens on-device, you can generate as many images as you want. You get a preview of the results in just a few seconds.
Image Playground is available directly inside Messages, Keynote, Pages, Freeform and its own standalone app. There’s an Image Playground API for third-party developers to adopt this feature in their own app.
Image Wand drops a context-aware sketch in your notes and drawings
Image: Apple
Image Wand is a new feature available in Notes and other apps that use Apple’s stock drawing tool palette. According to Sebastien Marineau-Mes, Apple’s vice president of Intelligent System Experience Engineering, “Image Wand can transform a rough sketch into a polished image that complements your notes and makes them more visual.”
You can circle any sketch in your note to turn it into a nicer-looking image. It analyzes your sketch and your description to turn it into a polished drawing. Circle an empty area, and it’ll analyze the surrounding notes to create a context-aware image from scratch.
Edit and search through your photos automatically
Image: Apple
The new Clean Up tool in Photos will “identify distracting objects in the background so you can make them disappear,” explained Marineau-Mes. It’s a new tool that you can access just by tapping the Edit button in Photos, alongside cropping, red eye and other image tools.
Searching through your pictures and videos is easier, too. You can search with natural language through the content of your library of photos and videos. It even analyzes the content of your videos, so you can find the one where someone does a sick kick flip on their skateboard while wearing a tie-dye shirt.
Creating memory movies is easier as well. While you used to have to pilfer through your library by hand, or watch the somewhat lame and predictable movies it generates for you, you can now create one with a simple prompt. Apple Intelligence understands the context of your request, the type of images it should look for, the people in your photos, the story told through the sequence of image, and even the right Apple Music track to set it to.
Apple Intelligence in iOS 18, powered by Apple silicon
These features are possible because of Apple silicon — Apple Intelligence is able to run privately on-device because all of their custom chips have powerful neural processing units, or NPUs. And for older devices that don’t have the latest A17 Pro chip, or for more powerful features that can’t run on-device, Apple Intelligence runs via Private Cloud Compute, a secure cloud server.
“Your photos and videos are not shared with Apple or anyone else,” reassured Marineau-Mes.
Apple Intelligence also powers an upgraded version of Siri, on-device writing tools and more.
