iOS 18.1 labels images edited with Clean Up in the Photos app [Video]

Apple on Wednesday released the third beta of iOS 18.1 with Apple Intelligence, and this one added the Clean Up feature to the Photos app. For those unfamiliar, Clean Up lets users delete objects and people from a photo using AI. To avoid controversy, the system will label photos edited with Clean Up – but most users probably won’t even know about it.

Unlike other AI tools for editing images, Apple’s Clean Up can only be used to remove people or objects from photos. There’s no way to add new elements or modify things like a person’s appearance. Still, removing someone from a photo can be enough to change its meaning, and we’ve seen a lot of controversy recently when it comes to AI-generated images.

As promised by Apple’s VP of software engineering Craig Federighi, iOS 18 will label images generated or edited by Apple Intelligence – and this applies to the Clean Up feature. Those running the latest beta of …