Apple’s upcoming iOS 18 is packed with a ton of AI-powered capabilities. The recent mobile operating system can transcribe text messages, summarize emails, and identify objects in photos. But one of the coolest features is Image Playground, which generates cartoon-like illustrations based on a text prompt.
While Apple has shown examples of its results during its keynotes, demos, and product videos, until now we haven’t seen a real-world example of the Image Playground character. Apple shared with WIRED the first example created by Image Playground, which it showed outside of its pre-recorded keynotes and marketing materials.
This photo of an adorable little dog wearing a party hat and smiling behind a birthday cake isn’t just any puppy. His name is Bailey, and it belongs to Craig Federighi, a senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, who created the photo for his wife in honor of Bailey’s recent birthday.
Federighi referenced the image during an interview with WIRED’s Lily Hay Newman about Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, a secure server environment the company has built to handle AI task requests that can’t be processed on a consumer device. Apple representatives later shared it. WIRED’s policy is to clearly identify any AI-generated images we publish, which is why the image has a watermark.
Image Playground debuts at a time when generative AI tools are creeping into the software of all the major tech companies, as Microsoft, Google, and Meta have all released AI-powered software focused on productivity and creativity. While Apple’s approach in iOS 18 also leans into the practical side of AI, the company has also included a few purely fun apps — Image Playground is a prime example of that.
It exists as a standalone app, but you can also access it through Messages. To generate an image, you can type in a description of what you want to see, select a photo of someone from your photo library, or choose from pre-loaded concepts. You can also choose between three styles: Illustration, Sketch, and Animation. This feature is not to be confused with Genmoji, which lets you generate custom emojis directly from your keyboard using text suggestions.
Since none of these generative AI features are in beta yet (although several other Apple Intelligence features are in developer beta for iOS 18.1), the only examples we’ve seen of Image Playground and Gemoji results have been tightly controlled by Apple. Until the features are released, Federighi’s adorable dog is the closest example we’ll see outside of heavily produced and edited marketing materials. And I’d say it’s pretty good, and certainly not as scary as the examples we saw during the WWDC presentation. Good job, Craig.
Updated: September 11, 2024, 7:33 pm EDT. This story has been amended to add the name of Federighi’s dog.