Apple today provided developers with the third beta of iOS 18.1, and it adds Clean Up, a new Apple Intelligence tool created for the Photos app. With Clean Up, you can remove unwanted objects from your photos, but its performance is hit or miss right now.
When you tap into any of your photos and then tap on the edit button, you'll see a new "Clean Up" tool that has an eraser icon. Tap on that, and if there's something obvious that can be removed from the image, it'll be automatically highlighted.
You can tap on the highlighted object to remove it, and it works like magic. If there isn't something automatically highlighted, don't worry, you can circle or scribble on any object in the photo to use Clean Up on it.
With the automatically highlighted objects, Clean Up works well. Apple has already done all the work in the background to find depth information and to calculate the fill the object should be replaced with. When you're selecting your own objects, it can be a little more difficult to get a clean look.
Clean Up works best when there's a clear, uncluttered background behind the object that you want to remove, and the smaller the object the better. Trying to remove a whole person from the foreground of image (such as in a group shot) with a lot going on in the background doesn't work super well, but it's really more designed for small, unwanted objects in the background of images anyway.
You can go through multiple iterations of Clean Up to try to get it to look better, and to remove small areas, just zoom in and then circle.
Clean Up can't be used on Live Photos, and when you use Clean Up, it turns off Live Photos. You can turn Live Photos back on, but then you lose the Clean Up edit. You also can't use Clean Up on videos, but it does work on all other kinds of images, including screenshots, old photos, and photos you didn't take with your iPhone.
For quick edits on an iPhone, Clean Up works well. It's not on par with some other desktop tools at this time, but Apple will undoubtedly make improvements going forward. Also, when you use Clean Up, a note is added to the metadata that lets you know that an AI edit has been made, so people will be able to see that it's been modified.
All Clean Up edits are reversible, so if you want to get back to your original image, you can revert at any time.
Other New Features in iOS 18.1 Beta 3
Along with Cleanup, iOS 18.1 beta 3 adds a couple of other features. The notification summary feature that was previously working for Mail and Messages now works for all of your apps, so you can see summaries of both multiple incoming messages and single notifications, giving you more information at a glance.
Also, in the Messages app, you can now use third-party stickers in-line like emoji. This was a feature in prior betas, but it only worked with stickers from Apple apps and stickers you created from photos.
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