Apple released the third beta of iOS 18.1 with Apple Intelligence on Wednesday, and it added the “Clean Up” feature to the Photos app. For those unfamiliar, Clean Up lets users use AI to delete objects and people from a photo. To avoid controversy, the system flags photos edited with Clean Up – but most users probably don’t even know about it.
Apple informs users when a photo has been modified with Clean Up, but …
Unlike other AI photo editing tools, Apple’s Clean Up can only be used to remove people or objects from photos. There’s no way to add new elements or change things like how a person looks. Still, removing a person from a photo can be enough to change its meaning, and we’ve seen a lot of controversy lately when it comes to AI-generated images.
As promised by Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice president of software engineering, iOS 18 will label images created or edited by Apple Intelligence – and that applies to the Clean Up feature. Those using the latest beta of iOS 18.1 will notice the new label in the additional information displayed by the Photos app.
When you see a photo that’s been edited with Clean Up, the app will indicate that it’s “modified with Clean Up.” This is certainly one way to let users know about a modified image, but it’s also very easy to miss the caption.
First, currently only Apple devices running iOS 18.1 beta 3 or macOS 15.1 beta 3 will see the “Clean Up” label in the Photos app. The photo’s EXIF data does contain the “Apple Photos Clean Up” label, but finding this information requires a computer or special software.
When sending the photo via AirDrop or iMessage, the “Clean Up” label is retained in the EXIF data, but not when sending via apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
Of course, this is the first beta with Clean Up, and Apple still has some time to make this information more visible to users. More importantly, the company is providing a way for third-party apps to detect and retain this tag on photos.
Clean Up is part of the Apple Intelligence features coming later this year with iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1. It’s worth noting that Apple Intelligence requires an iPhone 15 Pro or later, or iPads and Macs with the M1 chip or later.
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