iOS 18.1: AI ‘Clean Up’ in Photos was the one missing feature for most users [Video]

With iOS 18.1 Beta 3, Apple debuted its anticipated AI-assisted ‘Clean Up’ feature in the Photos app. As its name suggests, Clean Up helps users tidy up photos, removing everything from inanimate objects to people to blemishes, etc.

I think Clean Up is the one missing feature that the Photos app desperately needs. Although it’s far from perfect in its current beta iteration, it shows lots of promise. Although it’s the most exciting change in the latest iOS 18.1 beta, Clean Up isn’t the only thing new. Watch my hands-on video as I consider Clean Up alongside additional new features and changes.

Summarize Notifications

When you first install iOS 18.1 Beta 3, you’ll be greeted with several new splash screens, one of which is dedicated to the Summarize Notifications feature powered by Apple Intelligence. Since Apple Intelligence features began rolling out, I’ve been saying that the Summarize Notifications and Summarize Email features are some of Apple’s AI initiative’s most genuinely useful components. Many iOS beta testers have echoed my sentiments.

Video: iOS 18.1 Beta 3 – ‘Clean Up’ for Photos

Subscribe to 9to5mac on YouTube for more videos

In iOS 18.1 Beta 3, Apple presents a splash screen that lets you toggle Summarize Notifications off for individual apps. You can also navigate to these toggles via Settings → Notifications → Summarize Previews. Remember that Apple Intelligence must be turned on to access notification summaries in the Settings app, meaning only iPhone 15 Pro users and upcoming iOS 16 users can use this feature.

Why are summarized Notifications so useful? I’ll let the following screenshots do the talking:

In the screenshot on the left, you see the expanded view of notifications from YouTube Studio, with in-depth details for every notification. In the right screenshot, you see the collapsed notification view with a badge representing the amount of notifications. The collapsed notification also includes the new summarize icon, indicating that the notifications feature a summary that takes hints from all notifications.

In the above example, with notifications originating from YouTube Studio, the AI-assisted summarize feature succinctly provides essential details about all three notifications. Not every summary is this effective; a lot will depend on the language and context of the various notifications.

When it works well, I find notification summaries to be highly valuable. It allows me to quickly gain context from many notifications without perusing each one.

Clean Up

As good as notification summaries are, the headline feature of beta 3 is Clean Up in the Photos app. Clean Up, available after entering edit mode in Photos, lets you tap, circle, or swipe items within a picture or screenshot to remove them.

In some situations, Clean Up will automatically highlight suggested areas, making removing an item with just a tap possible. Alternatively, users can swipe on an item to remove it or circle an area to remove items within that selection.

Clean Up also takes advantage of a photo’s depth data and occludes items in view as you use a circle to select an image area. It will also try to identify items that you swipe on for automatic selection and removal.

Users can censor faces by utilizing a diagonal swipe across them. Doing so will pixelate the face, which can be helpful for tasks like blurring out a child’s face in photos.

As you’ll see in the embedded hands-on video above, Clean Up is far from perfect. Sometimes, it will make faces look like they’re melting; other times, it will remove items only to replace them with an indiscernible mishmash of cloned nearby items. It’s a work in progress and will improve with further development and training.

Until the arrival of Clean Up, you had to utilize a third-party app like Pixelmator to remove an item from a photo or screenshot. Clean Up is not just about removing items; it can also perform practical functions like fixing blemishes or removing dust from photos. In my opinion, this is the value of Clean Up for my particular use case. It’s great to be able to perform routine maintenance tasks without having to leave the Photos app.

What do you think about it?