Since iOS 17, you can choose from a selection of abstract images to illustrate your playlists in Apple Music. Before that, playlists created by users were illustrated with a 2x2 grid, where 4 covers of the albums appearing in the playlist in question were visible.
© Unsplash / Brett Jordan
In iOS 18, however, you will be able to create illustration images for your playlists yourself, thanks to Apple Intelligence. This is an image playground feature that Apple had not presented.
iOS 18 Beta 4 code reveals its secrets
By digging through the code of thelatest beta of iOS 18, our colleagues at 9to5mac got their hands on an interesting feature:
9to5Mac has discovered, based on code from iOS 18 Beta 4, that Apple is working on a new feature that will allow users to create playlist artwork for Apple Music with Apple Intelligence. Channels suggest that there will be a "Create Image" button when editing a playlist. This button will invoke Image Playground, which is part of Apple Intelligence features.
No photorealistic images
As a reminder, Image Playground is the image generator part of the Apple Intelligence suite. The tool allows you togenerate static images, in different styles, with certain limitations however, because Apple wants to avoid any problems.
We have already seen the possible errors, notably with Gemini which changed the course of history by generating historically incorrect images. For example, Gemini generated images of historical figures, like American founding fathers or ancient Greek warriors, with black skin color. This sparked a heated controversy, and led to the unexpected shutdown of the service.
In order to avoid this type of mishap, Apple takes precautions.You will not be able to generate photo realistic images with Image Playground. The illustrations that you can create for your playlists will essentially be stylized images.
