Now, Apple is launching its own tools for manipulating photographs using prompt descriptions. An updated version of Image Playground, Apple’s AI app for generating and editing images, notably introduces the ability to generate images in a photorealistic style. Apple says this “offers new powerful ways for users to bring their imagination to life.”

Image Playground allows you to modify images by describing complex changes in natural language, or by tapping, circling, or brushing over specific objects to simply move or resize them. In Apple’s keynote demonstration, we saw Image Playground being used to generate an image of a woman holding a birthday cake, using a real photograph of the person as a reference. The manipulated image doesn’t just add the cake, it also entirely replaces the original background. Until now, Apple avoided photorealistic AI generation. Image Playground previously focused on cartoon-like styles that don’t believably deepfake real people. So why did Apple change its mind?

The answer, seemingly, is SynthID: Google’s near-invisible watermarking system that tags content generated by its own AI tools. Apple says any photos adjusted with Apple Intelligence will be embedded with SynthID to make them easier to identify as AI manipulated. Apple was already labeling the metadata of images that were edited using Clean Up or generated through Image Playground, but using its own “forensics” feature that, to my knowledge, isn’t used by any other major tech platform.

SynthID watermarks will be applied to photos that are edited using Clean Up, Extend, and Spatial Reframing — the trio of Apple Intelligence-powered tools for Apple’s Photos app. The updated Clean Up tool has been given a “major upgrade” according to Apple, allowing you to remove “distractions” with “better quality and more realistic infill, even when the scene is complex.”