Apple is salvaging Image Playground with a boost from ChatGPT

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When Apple first unveiled Image Playground last year, the company touted it as a quick and easy way to generate personalized, original images with the help of Apple Intelligence. Upon launch, the app was met with skepticism, as some users were disappointed by its limitations and low-quality results.

For example, one Reddit user was surprised to find that Image Playground kept generating an image of a hand with six fingers when prompted to create an “up close image of a hand.” In another instance, a user was unable to receive images of simple descriptions, such as “old man” or “flower.”

Some people even questioned what the point of the app was, noting that it seemed juvenile when compared to popular AI image generators. (Of course, not everybody dislikes the app; some have described it as being a fun experience).

Fast-forward to this year’s WWDC, where the tech giant announced that it’s going to boost Image Playground with a ChatGPT integration, which should allow for a better, more advanced AI image generation service.

With the new ChatGPT integration, users will be able to access more styles that move beyond the emoji-like creations that Image Playground has become known for.

Images can be created in the following new styles: Oil Painting, Watercolor, Vector, Anime, and Print. In addition, people will be able to select a new “Any Style” option that allows them to describe exactly what they want. These new styles

will be visible under a banner that reads “ChatGPT style.”

In the past, users were limited to Animation, Illustration, Sketch, and Genmoji styles.

Apple says that Image Playground will send a user’s description to ChatGPT to generate an image. The tech giant notes that it won’t share anything with ChatGPT without users’ permission.

By integrating ChatGPT into Image Playground, Apple is giving the app another shot at attracting users while positioning its AI image creation tool as a more well-rounded competitor to other similar free apps.

Plus, it makes sense for Apple to leverage ChatGPT to boost Image Playground, especially since the company has already tapped OpenAI’s tools in other ways.

Last year, Apple announced that it was bringing ChatGPT to Siri and other first-party apps and capabilities across its operating systems. With Siri, the assistant leverages ChatGPT when it’s unable to answer a question or its own or when a user specifically asks Siri to send an inquiry to ChatGPT. Apple has also integrated ChatGPT into system-wide tools like Writing Tools, allowing users to generate, rewrite, and summarize text in apps like Notes and Mail.

The updated Image Playground app is expected to launch alongside the release of iOS 26 this fall.

Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University.