Google launching AI photo eraser for iPhone and Android phones in May

KEY POINTS

• Google announced Wednesday that it will make several of its photo-editing tools powered by generative artificial intelligence free to all users of Google Photos.
• Starting May 15, the company said it will expand access to AI-powered editing features, including the Magic Editor, Magic Eraser, Photo Unblur and Portrait Light.

Rick Osterloh, Google's senior vice president, Devices & Services, speaks during a product launch event for the Google Pixel 8, and Pixel 8 pro phones, Pixel Watch 2, and Pixel Buds Pro earbuds, in New York on October 4, 2023.

Ed Jones | Afp | Getty Images

Google announced Wednesday that it will make several of its photo-editing tools powered by generative artificial intelligence free to all users of Google Photos.

The company said in a blog post that starting May 15 and over the following weeks, it will expand access to AI-powered editing features previously only available to its Pixel phones and via its Google One cloud storage subscription service.

The Google Photos AI features include Magic Eraser, which removes unwanted objects from photos; Photo Unblur, which sharpens out-of-focus images; and Portrait Light, which can rebalance a photo's lighting.

Google said the expansion will also bring those features to more devices including Pixel tablets. Desktop users on Google's operating system must use a Chromebook Plus with ChromeOS version 118+ or have at least 3GB RAM, while users on a mobile device must use Android 8.0 or iOS 15 or higher, Google said.

As part of next month's roll-out, Google is also broadening access to its Magic Editor feature to all Pixel devices. All Google Photos users on Android and iOS will receive 10 Magic Editor photo saves per month, according to the announcement. Pixel device users and premium Google One subscribers who pay for 2TB of storage will have unlimited saves.

The Magic Editor tool, which launched with the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro last fall, uses generative AI to produce various photo edits such as repositioning subjects, removing items or changing the sky's color, while creating new imagery that fills in the gaps.