Apple isn't doing ‘AI for the sake of AI’, wants to give users 'superpowers'

Apple has lagged behind rivals like Google and Samsung in adding AI features to its phones. The company's now-botched attempt to bring Apple Intelligence features on par with, or better than, the competition also faced severe hurdles, as many of the advertised features were delayed while others, like the Siri revamp, didn't arrive for over two years and may now finally see the light of day with iOS 27.

However, as it rolls out another wave of AI-powered features, the company is now focusing on how the new technology can help users solve problems that were previously difficult or impossible to address.

The comments by McCormack come at a time when Apple has just unveiled new generative AI features coming to the Photos app with the iOS 27 update arriving in September. While there was already a Clean Up tool in iOS 26, the feature couldn't convincingly fill in removed areas like the AI-powered eraser tools on Samsung Galaxy and Pixel devices, which led to Apple being criticised online.

However, with iOS 27, Apple has upgraded its AI models, which it claims can offer more natural-looking object and people removal.

The app has also gained two new AI-powered features. First, Extend allows users to expand a photo beyond its original frame. Second, Spatial Reframe allows users to change the perspective and composition of an image by generating additional pixels to fill in the gaps.

“You don't have to know all the details of how to do something in Photoshop or something else. It gives normal people these absolute superpowers,” McCormack told the publication.

Meanwhile, the generative AI features in the Photos app cannot be used to change the main subject's face. Clean Up also cannot be used to remove the primary subject in an image.

Similarly, for the Extend feature, Apple only allows users to use the AI once and expand an image by up to 25 per cent. Users do not get the option to save and repeatedly edit the image, and there are no infinite extensions possible.

“A photograph is of something that actually happened,” McCormack said. “We really do believe in this idea of authentic journalism to your own life. When you're capturing photographs, you're making these memories, you're putting moments of your life in a bottle that you can go back to. It's really important to us that we create tools that keep the sanctity of that moment.”

Apple is also planning to add Google's SynthID to images later this year in order to indicate, through an invisible watermark, that an image has been created or modified using generative AI.