Google's AI Magic Editor is coming to the iPhone — here's what you can do

Google’s AI editing features are pretty incredible, and it’s just been confirmed they won’t be exclusive to Pixel phones and Google One for much longer. According to a Google blog post, starting May 15 a bunch of these AI editing features will be coming to Google Photos on even more devices — including the iPhone.

Google specifically mentions Magic Editor, Magic Eraser, Photo Unblur and Portrait light in the announcement post. You may remember that some of these features are already available in Google Photos on non-Pixel devices — but only with the right Google One subscription. Now, though, Google is removing restrictions on most of these features.

The one exception to this is Magic Editor, the AI image editing tool that offers a lot more freedom to move objects and otherwise alter the image however you see fit. Generative AI will then be able to fill in the blanks left by your tinkering and produce something a lot faster and more easily than it would be to learn how to use Photoshop.

Magic Editor is pretty new, though, and Google is limiting access to 10 free saves each month. If you want any more than this you’ll either have to buy a Pixel device or subscribe to a Premium Google One subscription with at least 2TB of cloud storage. Those start at $100 a year.

The full list of available features is available on the Google support site and include a lot of features. These include Photo Unblur, Color pop, HDR effects, Portrait blur and so on. Unfortunately, aside from Magic Editor, a lot of the more premium AI features like Audio Magic Eraser or Best Take are still exclusive to the Pixel 8 series.

The only real caveat for those features is that you have the right phone. Google says that actual feature availability may be dependent on the device you have. But some of them will be available so long as you have at least 3GB of RAM and are running Android 8, iOS 15, ChromeOS 118 or higher.

The features will begin rolling out worldwide on May 15, which is right around the time we expect Google I/O 2024 to be. No doubt we’ll hear more about Google’s plans for AI features, for Android in general and on Pixel phones