Key Takeaways
- Apple wants to make sure that images represent reality rather than fiction.
- After much internal discussion, Apple decided to include the Clean Up option.
- The label “Modified with Clean Up” will be applied by Apple to all images that have been altered using cleanup.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Craig Federighi, the head of software at Apple, clarified that the company is being very cautious when it comes to image manipulation.
Determining if a photo is authentic or has been altered by an AI tool has grown more challenging as sophisticated AI tools are introduced virtually every day. Apple is launching a new “Clean Up” feature in iOS 18.1, which is anticipated to be released next week, that lets users eliminate extraneous elements from pictures. Google’s Magic Editor, which has been around for a while, is comparable to this.
Nevertheless, Google has added a new tool called Reimagine to Magic Editor’s repertoire, enabling users to fully alter photos. You can surround a building with lava, add rainbows at night, or put a monster next to you in a picture—the options are unlimited. The results are quite persuasive and frequently unsettling, which is concerning.
Federighi responded that Apple wants to make sure that images represent “real information, not fantasy” when asked why they are staying with the more straightforward Clean Up tool rather than something like Reimagine. He added that there was internal discussion on even the simple Clean Up feature, which aids in removing undesired things from pictures. The tool’s removal of items that were “actually” in the picture raised concerns.
However, there was a high need for a tool that would eliminate what consumers consider to be “extraneous” features without significantly changing the scene’s meaning, which is how Apple came up with the Clean Up feature.
Federighi also underlined that Apple would always work to restrict the amount of image modification that users can do since they understand the effect that these AI editing tools may have on reality.
Apple’s Method for Recognizing Edited Photos
Apple will tag all such photographs as “Modified with Clean Up” and contain metadata indicating they were altered using the Clean Up tool to make it simple to identify images that have been altered by the program.
With its Content Authenticity tool, Adobe is promoting authenticity in tandem with Apple. It enables content producers to incorporate content credentials into their creations. These credentials function as verified metadata that offer details about the content’s history and originator.
Unfortunately, Google does not disclose how AI is used to create photographs on its Pixel smartphones, in contrast to Apple, which shows whether an image has been edited using AI.
