Everything You Can Do With Apple’s New AI Image Generator
Now that the iOS 18.2 update has arrived for iPhone, you may have noticed a brand new app on your iPhone 15 Pro and 16 series device: Image Playground. It’s an AI image generator built into your iPhone, powered by Apple Intelligence. Image Playground also works on iPads and Macs that support Apple Intelligence, so even if you’re using Android, you’ll still be able to use it. I’ve been using iOS 18.2 for a while thanks to the beta, and here’s everything I’ve learned about Apple’s first dive into AI imaging.
Getting started with Image Playground is easy
I have a hard time coming up with useful text hints for AI image generators, but Image Playground makes the process easy. While you have the option to enter one or two sentences to create images, the app also allows you to choose from a variety of preset themes such as fantasy, chef, forest, etc. Each of these themes appears above the text field of your invitation. You can combine multiple topics and add a text prompt to quickly create a detailed proposal for Image Playground to work with.
You also have the option to click the + button to select photos from your library to upload as part of your invitation, and there’s also a profile icon that allows you to select a person from your photo library as a suggested image. Finally, you can create images in animation, illustration, or sketch style. Choosing from these pre-made options is a bit limiting, but it helps eliminate the difficulty of describing a cohesive aesthetic over text, and the inability to create photorealistic images should help prevent deepfakes .
Overall, I was quite impressed with Image Playground’s ability to generate images even without any text prompts, although I’m glad the option is there. This should make the tool accessible to both experts and beginners.
You get multiple results for each query
When I tried Image Playground, I was also impressed by its speed. I tried several different prompts of varying difficulty, and the app always generated the image within a few seconds. During some of these tests, I was in the woods with an unstable internet connection, and even then the app returned results fairly quickly. This is because most of the processing happens on-device, and as a result, my iPhone 16 Pro Max got slightly warm after taking about 15-20 images.
But while you’ll get your first result in record time, it’s not your only one, as swiping left on a result will show you more options as they become available. Typically the app will quickly generate 3-5 results for me per prompt, with one of them usually being pretty close to what I wanted.
You can also try multiple styles for each prompt. I used Image Playground to create an image of Lifehacker writer Khamosh Pathak attending an Indian wedding, and the end result came out best in animation style. Illustration and sketch styles may be better suited for things like social media profile pictures.
Use Image Playground with other applications for best results.
If you’re looking for a great use case for Image Playground, look no further than how Notes implements it. You can now draw a sketch in Notes and ask the AI to turn it into a piece of art. This can be useful for jotting down your ideas and quickly connecting them with images to help you visualize them. When you create a new note in the Notes app, simply tap the pen icon in the tool palette and create a sketch. Then tap the Image Wand icon (it looks like a stage magician’s wand), trace the sketch, and optionally add a description so Apple Intelligence can turn your sketch into a more detailed AI image. It will automatically launch in the “sketch” style, but clicking the + icon next to the image will allow you to change styles. If you don’t add a description, Image Wand will automatically extract context from your notes to help frame your image. Likewise, you technically don’t even need a basic sketch, since Image Wand can also use text from your notes to create an image from scratch.
Please note that this feature works on iPhone and iPad, but not on Mac.
Image Playground is also integrated into Messages and lets you create images while you’re chatting with someone. This feature works on your iPhone, iPad and Mac. Just press the + button in any chat and select Image Playground . Now enter a description and you can create an image from Messages and send it directly to your contact. This is probably how I see myself using Image Playground most often in the future – for harmless fun with friends.
Please look at the images carefully to avoid bad results.
Images created by AI seem impressive at first, but if you look closely, you can sometimes notice errors. In the above example involving Lifehacker’s Khamosh Pathak, one of the results was a hand with no nails and only three fingers. In other prompts, the app generated a knife with a handle so bent it looked broken, and fantastic fruit that no human had ever seen. Apple clearly warns that Image Playground may produce unexpected results, but you are responsible for discovering them.
If you use this app to create funny photos for fun, it is really nice. I just wouldn’t use it for serious work.