Apple Image Playground iOS 27 brings on‑device Any Style prompts

The headline change in Apple Image Playground for iOS 27 is a new option called Any Style. Earlier versions only offered a short list of set looks, such as illustration. Now you can describe the style you want in natural language, and Apple says that covers virtually any visual approach.

The other big addition is editing with touch plus words. After you create an image, you can select part of it with your finger and then type what should change. In the cabin example, you could pick the door and ask for it in red, or drag the selection somewhere else in the scene.

Apple showed the redesigned app at WWDC26 in June, and the overhaul also brought photorealistic image generation to the app for the first time. Overall it has far fewer restrictions than the version that launched in December 2024.

Image Playground can now create Lock Screen wallpapers and Contact Posters, the full-screen card people see when you call them. You don’t even have to open the app to do it.

To make a wallpaper, long-press your Lock Screen and tap the plus button, or go to Settings, then Wallpaper, then Add New Wallpaper. Image Playground now sits in the top row of the gallery. Tap it, describe what you want, and optionally pick a style or start from a photo or a person. The result comes out sized to fit your iPhone screen.

iOS 27 also adds suggested AI wallpapers to the Featured section. These are restyled versions of your own photos, in looks such as Retro Illustration and Animation. Any wallpaper made this way shows the Image Playground icon beside it, so you always know which ones came from AI.

You need a device that supports Apple Intelligence, with that feature switched on. On iPhone, that means an iPhone 16 or newer, or the iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max.

On iPad, it works on models with an M1 chip or later, plus the iPad mini with the A17 Pro chip. On Mac, any computer with at least an M1 chip qualifies. Older iPhones, including the regular iPhone 15, don’t get Image Playground at all.

The app also lives inside other Apple apps, including Messages, Keynote and Freeform, so you can make an image without leaving a conversation or a slide.

The iOS 27.2 update, released in late October, quietly changed what happens to your creations. Everything made in Image Playground now carries SynthID, an invisible watermark built by Google that identifies AI-generated content.

SynthID is hidden in the image’s pixels rather than in file details that disappear when you share or screenshot a picture. Google says it doesn’t affect image quality and is designed to survive cropping, filters and compression. Some AI edits in the Photos app get the mark too: Extend, Reframe and large Clean Up edits do, while small Clean Up touch-ups may not.

Your iPhone can’t check for the watermark itself. To test an image, you upload it to Google’s SynthID Detector website, which Google opened to everyone in October. A clean result doesn’t prove a photo is real, because the detector only spots marks from Google and its partners.

For everyday use, Image Playground has gone from a novelty sticker maker to something you might reach for when you need a specific picture fast: a birthday card image, a joke for a group chat, or a wallpaper nobody else has.

The watermark matters if you share images widely. Anything you make in the app can be identified as AI-made by anyone who runs it through the detector, even someone without an Apple device. That is useful for spotting fakes, and worth knowing before you post a realistic-looking creation as if it were a real photo.

Here is how to start a fresh image in the app:

1. Open Image Playground and type a description in the prompt box.
2. Expand the styles menu to pick a preset, or describe your own look with Any Style.
3. To feature a real person, tap the person icon and choose a face from your photos.
4. Use the box under the image, or select part of it by touch, to refine the result.
5. Tap Share to send it, or choose Genmoji to save it with your stickers.