I know I’m late to the party, and that this has been reviewed already by those that write about Apple software and anyone with an iPhones. Nevertheless, I’ve upgraded my Mac to the version of MacOS that has Apple AI, and along with it came Image Playgrounds. I thought I’d give Image Playground a go.

Here’s my first attempt. May I present to you: generic white technologist in a bow tie using a computer with a confused expression on their face:

Auto-generated description: An AI generated image of a person with glasses and a red bow tie sits behind a laptop, looking intently at the screen.
Based on true events.

It took me a little while to understand how to compose the image. I knew that this was going to be a very on-rails experience, but I was still expecting that prompts that would work for DALL-E would work here too. But when I tried the prompt “a technologist using a computer with a confused expression on their face,” I just got back an error. Eventually, I figured out that I needed to build up the image by adding additional clarifiers, which would floating around a pulsating orb while the image was being generated. This was a little more on-rails than I was expecting but I guess it’s a way for Apple to make this approachable for those not use to using ChatGPT, along with controlling the suitability of the output.

As for the image itself, all I could say is that it’sā€¦ okay. A little bit on the cartoonish side, but I’m guessing Apple prefers that over something with a high degree of realism. The subject looks nothing like me but that’s by design: I dared not use myself as the subject, given how bad the preview photo I assume it was going to use was. I am a little disappointed by how expressionless the generated people are. I’m not sure how well the underlying model actually understands expression like “confused” given that most of the suggested images had a neutral expression, with one exhibiting something that I can only describe as “surprise and delight.” This is the best one I could find.

Finally, it seems the developers of this app has never heard of the file system. I could share the generated image to a bunch of Apple apps like Mail and Notes, but I couldn’t find a way to save it as an image file. If there is a way, it’s not obvious: I checked the toolbar, menu bar and context menu. Copy to clipboard was an option so I ended up copying it to Acorn and saving it as a JPEG there. This is definitely something that would get any technologist confused.

So yeah, I don’t see this being a regular part of my workflow. It’s better than I expected, but this is definitely something that Apple has built for people who have not used DALL-E or any of the other AI image generators out there (and, I suspect, to appease their shareholders). For myself, I’ll stick with what I’m using now.

I’ll close this with a gallery of a few other images I’ve tried:

Auto-generated description: A tiger sits serenely in a lush forest reading an open book, wearing a green robe. Auto-generated description: A cockatiel with a striking yellow crest is perched on a chessboard surrounded by chess pieces. Auto-generated description: A sailboat with red sails navigates a tranquil ocean at sunset, surrounded by palm-covered islands. Auto-generated description: A large airship floats above industrial buildings with tall smoke stacks against a cloudy sky.