Apple’s Clean Up feature is like the fairy godmother of photo editing – move your finger and unwanted objects will disappear with a sparkle. The animations add a magical touch too, with some sparkle appearing as the object vanishes from your screen. Powered by AI – Apple calls it Apple Intelligence – the feature is similar to Google’s Magic Eraser available on some Android phones. Although Apple Intelligence hasn’t fully rolled out yet, it is available in the iOS 18.1 developer beta.

It is currently exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. At India Today Tech, we have been testing Apple Intelligence in the iPhone 15 Pro for quite some time now and Clean Up has quickly become one of our favourite features. But there are a few areas where it is not perfect.

What is clean up?

The Clean Up feature is designed to help users improve their photos by erasing unwanted elements. Whether it’s a random passerby in the background or an ex-friend or family member you want to remove from your favorite group photo, the Clean Up tool makes these unwanted people or objects vanish from your images in an instant.

This feature uses advanced machine learning algorithms to analyze the image and fill in the blank spaces left behind when the object is removed. In some cases, it makes the edit look natural and almost like the object was never there, however, in some cases, it doesn’t create the same magic.

The magic works – but only for some photos

After spending some time with Apple’s Clean Up tool, we were surprised by its inconsistent results. We tested the feature on various photos, and each time, the results were different. In some cases, the Clean Up tool worked perfectly, making the objects disappear without a trace. For example, we had a photo of a dog with a stick in its mouth. Despite the complexity – since the stick was visible on both sides of the dog’s jaw – the tool managed to completely remove the stick while leaving the dog’s jaw intact. It was an impressive edit.

However, when we tried this tool on a simple image with a paper bag lying in front of a dog, the results were disappointing. Although the bag was removed, it left behind a black residue of the bag that had turned to ashes.

In another example, we tried to remove a person from a group photo. The tool erased the person, but left a blurry, shadowy figure that was disturbing to look at – it felt like a supernatural entity was present. The image could convince anyone that there was a ghost in the photo, if you told them so. This was surprising because in a similar group photo, the tool removed a person so cleanly that it looked like they were never there.

We ultimately found that the Clean Up tool performs exceptionally well on photos taken with an iPhone. It removed unwanted objects with impressive accuracy, leaving no traces behind. The edited image looks smooth, and you’d be hard-pressed to tell that anything was deleted. This is a powerful tool for users who want to quickly clean up their images without needing any photo-editing tools.

But when we used it on photos taken with an Android phone, the results were far less impressive, often leaving behind these weird, shadowy residues. It’s clear that while the clean up tool has potential, it currently prefers iPhone photos, leaving the results for non-iPhone images less polished.

Why the difference in results?

The difference in the way the Clean Up feature works suggests that Apple may have designed it to work best with iPhone photos. Since iPhones have advanced cameras that are tightly tied to iOS, the feature seems to be fine-tuned for those photos. Also the image processing used by the iPhone is a known factor for Apple, and it may be able to better fine-tune Clean Up for iPhone photos.

But this does mean that if you’re using photos from another device, the clean up tool might not be as effective. So, while it’s great for iPhone users, it might be less reliable for those using photos from other devices.

That being said, the feature is currently in beta, which means it is still being developed and has room for improvement. The final version could be quite different, and the clean up tool could work just as well on Android photos. But to see if that happens or not, we’ll have to wait for the stable release of iOS 18.1, which will include all the Apple intelligence features.