Apple’s upcoming iOS 18 is packed with artificial intelligence-powered features. The new mobile OS can rewrite text messages, summarize emails, and identify objects in photos. But one of the most fun features is Image Playground, which generates cartoon-like illustrations based on text prompts.
Apple has shown examples of the work in keynotes, demos, and product videos, but we’ve never seen a live example of an Image Playground character before. Apple showed WIRED the first examples created with Image Playground, outside of a pre-recorded keynote or marketing materials.
This image of an adorable little dog wearing a party hat and smiling behind a birthday cake isn’t just any puppy: Her name is Bailey, and she belongs to Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, who created the image for his wife in honor of Bailey’s recent birthday.
Federighi mentioned the illustration when he interviewed WIRED’s Lily Hay-Neumann about Apple’s private cloud computing, a secure server environment the company has built to handle requests for AI tasks that consumers can’t handle on their devices. An Apple representative later shared the illustration. WIRED has a policy of clearly identifying any AI-generated images it publishes, which is why the images are watermarked.
Image Playground debuts at a time when generative AI tools are making their way into software from all the big tech companies, with Microsoft, Google, and Meta releasing AI-powered software focused on productivity and creativity. Apple’s approach in iOS 18 also prioritizes the practical aspects of AI, but the company is also including some apps that are just purely fun, and Image Playground is a prime example of this.
It exists as a standalone app but can also be accessed through Messages. To generate an image, you can type a description of what you want to see, choose a photo of someone from your photo library, or choose from preloaded concepts. You can also choose from three styles: illustration, sketch, and animation. This feature should not be confused with Genmoji, which lets you generate custom emojis directly from your keyboard using text prompts.
Neither of these generative AI features are available in the beta yet (several other Apple Intelligence features are available in the iOS 18.1 developer beta), so the only examples we’ve seen in Image Playground and Gemoji output are ones that are tightly controlled by Apple. Until the features are released, Federighi’s adorable dog is the closest thing to an example that exists outside of heavily produced and edited marketing materials. And I think it’s a pretty good example, and not as creepy as the one we saw in the WWDC keynote. Great job, Craig.
Updated: Sept. 11, 2024 at 7:33 pm EDT. This story has been changed to add the name of Federighi’s dog.
