othing has transformed iPhone photography more over the past decade than machine learning and artificial intelligence.
The combined power of software and Apple silicon has enabled tiny photography lenses and minuscule camera sensors to take photos that defy the laws of physics. While early iPhone cameras were good for wide-angle shots of nearby subjects in full daylight, over the years Apple has advanced the cameras to take more and more shots traditionally reserved for professional DSLRs and mirrorless cameras: from low-light night shots to zoom photography to macros to full-bokeh portraits. And nearly all of it is due to ML and AI.
In fact, iPhone photography is arguably Apple's greatest AI success story, and it's a clue for how Apple will likely continue to implement AI in the future: by quietly making features you use every day a lot better.
As we prepare for the unveiling of the next iPhone this week, here's a quick recap of the AI and ML features that have launched on the iPhone throughout the years:
- 2016: iPhone 7 Plus, iOS 10, Photos app - Portrait Mode with ML-powered subject separation; AI-powered people, object, and scene recognition as Memories in the Photos app
- **2017: iPhone X (2017)** - Portrait Lighting, ML-powered front-camera Portrait Mode
- **2018: iPhone XS (2018)** - Smart HDR, ML depth segmentation, adjustable Depth Control
- **2019: iPhone 11 (2019)** - Night mode, Deep Fusion, ML-powered Smart HDR
- **2020: iPhone 12 Pro (2020)** - Smart HDR 3, expanded Deep Fusion and Night mode
- 2021: iPhone 13, iOS 15, Photos app (2021) - Photographic Styles, Smart HDR 4, Cinematic mode, Live Text, Visual Look Up
- **2022: iPhone 14, iOS 16, Photos app (2022)** - Photonic Engine, subject lifting from photos
- **2023: iPhone 15 (2023)** - Automatic portrait detection, next-gen Smart HDR
- 2024: iPhone 16, iOS 18, Photos app (2024) - Next-generation Photographic Styles, Clean Up, natural-language search, create your own movies in Memories from prompts
- 2025: iPhone 17 - AI-powered Center Stage to automatically reframe group selfies, updated Photonic Engine that uses ML to improve detail, noise, and color
It's important to note that Apple approaches AI and ML from a different lens than competitors like Samsung, Google, and Chinese manufacturers like Huawei. While competitors use generative AI more broadly to add things to an image, such as adding yourself to a group shot, putting a different sky in the image, or making a partially eaten cupcake look uneaten, Apple is more of a purist when it comes to what is or isn't in the photo.
Apple's VP of camera software engineering, Jon McCormack, has stated in multiple interviews over the years that Apple sees a photograph as a celebration of a moment that happened, and that it deserves our respect as such.
This year, in iOS 27 with Spatial Reframing, which lets you shift the perspective that a photo was taken from, and Extend, which can use generative AI to expand the content on the edges of a photo, Apple is pushing the boundaries of that definition. Also, the upgraded version of Clean Up lets you remove larger objects, using AI-generated capabilities to fill in the scene. Apple still views all of these features as coherent with the idea of enhancing the shot you took, versus remixing it to create something that might be more akin to a work of art than a photograph.
Our Deeper View #
Apple could still learn from some of its Android rivals on a few AI and ML features. Some basic AI photo-editing features could align with Apple's view of preserving the integrity of the shot you took while enhancing it to focus on the elements most important to you (similar to Clean Up). For example, I recently took a 10x zoom of a mountain lion at the zoo and then uploaded it to ChatGPT and asked it to "remove the fence in the foreground," which was a major distraction. The result was terrific, and I could see parents wanting to do something similar when taking photos of their kids at a soccer or baseball game and having to shoot a photo through a fence. That's the kind of super-smart AI feature that doesn't have to make a big deal about being AI but can simply make things better. Apple's flagship AI feature of 2026, the new Siri AI, is important. But it's also just keeping pace with the industry. Where Apple can be a leader in AI is by doing more things like what it has done in photography: using AI to make great features and experiences that don't need to shout from the rooftops that they're AI.