According to this weekend’s Power On newsletter, Apple’s image generation models – used in Genmoji and Image Playground – will receive a “big boost” in visual quality. Currently, they are far from having anything exciting.
We recently heard that Apple will be implementing new Genmoji suggestions based on your Photo library and other key details – but that won’t be the only upgrade coming to Genmoji this year. According to Mark Gurman, Apple models will benefit from a “big boost” in terms of visual quality:
I also reported that Apple is preparing to support third-party AI models – beyond OpenAI’s ChatGPT – for image creation in the redesigned Image Playground app in iOS 27. It turns out, I’m now told, that there’s a bit more to the story: Apple’s own models for Genmoji and Image Playground have been improved, so the quality is greatly improved this year.
When Image Playground and Genmoji debuted in iOS 18.2, the image fidelity was certainly less than impressive. Genmoji was generally decent, but Image Playground was incredibly poor, especially in comparison to other image generation tools. In reality, it didn’t matter, since the world probably needs fewer AI applications, but in the end, Apple decided to ship Image Playground, and it shouldn’t have been bad like that.
Certainly, Image Playground and Genmoji are powered by in-device models. That doesn’t necessarily excuse him being mediocre, but it’s part of the explanation. Either way, the quality should improve this year, although it’s unclear whether the models will still work on the device.
Finally, Apple will add support for other AI image generation models in Image Playground. Currently, it supports ChatGPT image generation. It will likely be expanded to support Google’s Nano Banana models, among other competitors.
My favorite Apple accessory recommendations:
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