Just before it’s expected to announce the new iPhone lineup, Apple released a beta update that offers the first real glimpse at what life will be like with Apple Intelligence on board. iOS 18.1 Beta 3 enables AI features that Apple previewed at WWDC, including Clean Up in Apple Photos and Notification Summaries. It also lets you toy around with the new Siri interface.
Clean Up works like Google Photos’ Magic Eraser. It lets you scrub unwanted people and objects from a photo’s background. Once you join the Apple Intelligence beta, you’ll also get access to Notification Summaries, which uses AI to weed out the messages and pings that matter the least.
If you’re interested, enroll your iPhone in the iOS beta. But move fast because it’s almost Glowtime. Then, head into Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri to toggle the option to join the Apple Intelligence waitlist.
A Glimpse at Apple Intelligence
I haven’t had a chance to allow notification summaries to come through, so I can’t speak to how those feel. You can access the ability in the Settings app under Notifications > Summarize Previews. From there, you can choose which apps to include in the summaries and how often you want iOS to notify you throughout the day. I asked for a summary to come through at the end of the day. We’ll see how it does after a week of the Sephora app spamming me about a sale.
The new Siri interface is quite nice. Rather than a bulbous little orb appearing out of nowhere, the screen lights up, indicating Siri time. It’s done a pretty good job of discerning whether I’m speaking to it or uttering its name for some other reason; I talk out loud when I write, and Siri ignored me all the times I was whisper-talking to myself. You can also type to Siri in this update, which is available by double tapping at the bottom of the screen where the Home button usually resides.
There are a few other minor Apple Intelligence-laden features you can tap into on the iOS 18.1 beta 3. Apple Photos now lets you create a memory by typing a summary of the photos and scenes you want to see, plus you can customize the order of albums and memories. Mail has also been infused with AI magic with abilities like Priority Messages, which knows which emails to surface to the top, and Smart Reply, which helps send off an email one-handedly.
How to Use Apple Photo’s Clean Up Feature
Like Magic Eraser in Google Photos, the magic of Apple’s Clean Up feature is available solely through the Apple Photos app. You can use the feature with a photo taken with any phone, iPhone or not, but for now, most of what I tried editing are photos snapped with the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
If you’re running the latest beta, tap to edit the photo, then swipe over until you see the option for Clean Up. Tap that. If your iPhone catches on to what can be dismissed in the background, it will highlight the objects and other little nicks throughout the photo to delete. In some instances, it’ll overdo it–for example, asking if you want to remove any evidence of a knob from an elaborate front door. Fortunately, you can undo and redo edits as you move through the photo. You can also circle and select areas that you want the app to edit,
I tried Clean Up on a couple of pictures. In the first one, I tried to scrub a second person from a photo of the fireside at WWDC with iJustine, AI head John Giannandrea, and Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi. Clean Up had difficulty reproducing the pattern on Giannandrea’s chair. The second picture successfully cut out my shadow and the Tamagotchi hanging from my bag. The third attempt offered to remove a few coats and things hanging out in the back of a scene. I let it scrub out the knob, too, and was impressed at how well it filled out the rest of the door. The fourth attempt also ran into a snag like the first time.
Like Google’s Magic Eraser, Apple’s Clean Up works best on simpler subjects and backgrounds. And like Google’s Magic Eraser, Clean Up still has more work to do. I loved that it could scrub out common objects in the background and make them look like they weren’t there before, but this is the same thing Android users can do already. It’s good to see Apple catch up to everyone else and offer features that are now commonplace on most mobile operating systems. But this isn’t the true power of Apple Intelligence. It’s merely a tiny sampling of what’s to come fully once iOS 18 launches to everyone else. We’ll have more to say about Apple Intelligence after the iPhone launch event in September.
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