Apple's MGIE: Your Photos, Your Words, No Clicks Required

Hold onto your digital brushes, designers; Apple has just thrown a curveball into the creative arena with MGIE (MLLM-Guided Image Editing). Forget clicking and dragging through photo editing software—now, a simple text prompt can transform your images into works of art.


Apple, in collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara, has birthed MGIE, a tool that lets users describe desired photo changes in plain language. Crop, resize, flip, add filters—whatever you desire, MGIE's got it covered, and all you have to do is type it out.

This MLLM-Guided marvel interprets your textual commands, then flexes its imaginative muscles to visualize the requested edits. It's not just about making a sky bluer; it's about bumping up the brightness in the sky region of an image. The result? A seamless blend of user intention and image manipulation.

Want those tigers in the Sahara to look less gloomy? A simple "add more contrast to simulate more light" brightens up the scene. MGIE turns your vague commands into explicit visual intentions, leading to reasonable image edits.

Apple, always generous with its innovations, has made MGIE available on GitHub for download. There's also a web demo on Hugging Face Spaces, because who wouldn't want to give their photos a virtual hug?

While Apple hasn't spilled the beans on its future plans for MGIE, one thing is clear—this is just the beginning of Apple's foray into the generative AI space. Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, hinted that more AI features are in store for Apple devices this year.

While other tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, and Google have dominated the AI landscape, Apple is making significant strides to solidify its presence. With MGIE, Apple not only showcases its commitment to advancing AI but also highlights its determination to integrate cutting-edge features seamlessly into its devices.

Graphic designers, take heed; your next editing ally might just be a computer program, simplifying intricate processes into a straightforward dialogue.

Welcome to the future, I guess.

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