Apple's Image Playground could soon do more than make cartoon pictures of your cat – Apple Intelligence set for a welcome overhaul

Apple’s Image Playground has been around since Apple Intelligence was first introduced in December 2024, when iOS 18.2 was released.

It’s Apple’s answer to the multiple AI-image generation apps that exist, offering users the ability to create images on-device, though the quality of the results is a little underwhelming compared to competing image-generating tools.

What improvements can we expect for Image Playground?

But, that could be about to change. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter, Apple has significantly improved the underlying models powering both Genmoji and Image Playground. He claims quality set to receive a "big boost" when iOS 27 arrives later this year.

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It will be welcome news for anyone who has created a Genmoji or played around with Image Playground over the past 18 months and thought the results could be better.

Genmoji has generally been considered passable, but Image Playground could certainly improve. In their defence, both tools run on-device models, which naturally come with limitations, though it remains to be seen whether that will still be the case after iOS 27's improvements.

Gurman also said the quality upgrade isn't the only improvement coming. It’s previously been rumoured that iOS 27 will introduce suggested Genmoji based on your photo library, which should make the feature feel a lot more personal and useful day-to-day.

And Image Playground is set to expand its support for third-party AI models. It already works with ChatGPT for image creation, so perhaps it could soon support Google's Nano Banana models and other competitors, too.

Nothing is officially confirmed as yet, of course, but with WWDC 2026 just around the corner on 8 June, we at least don’t have long to wait to see exactly what Apple has in store, not just for Image Playground but Apple Intelligence in general.