Apple added the Clean Up feature with the iOS 18.1 update. Although the main purpose of this feature was to remove unwanted objects from your photos, it can also be used to hide faces in photos. You just rotate the face in the photo, and it will automatically blur it. Apple called it copyright protection.
With the iOS 27 update, Apple has improved the Cleanup feature, and now it can clear even more complex scenes. However, with this improvement comes a caveat. In the first beta, the masking feature does not work. Instead, it does something funny and scary.
What happens when you dim the face in iOS 27?
I discovered this only by accident. I was cleaning up the photo before posting and went to blur the face. I opened the image, selected the Cleanup tool, and rotated the face the way I always had. On the first few attempts, it lied to me.
It tells me that ID protection has been used. But as you can see in the screenshot, the face is clearly visible. So I tried to force his hand. Instead of going around the faces, I painted over them with my finger. That’s when a miracle happened.
Instead of blurring the face or removing it, it creates a brand new face. Yes, it gave the person in the photo a new face, and it did such a convincing job that if I were to share the photo with anyone, they wouldn’t be able to tell that the original face had been replaced by an AI-generated one.
Just to make sure I’m not seeing an unusual event, I tried repeating this with many photos of different people, and the same thing happened every time. If I circle the face, it would lie to me that the face is blurred, and if I paint over it, it will generate a completely new face.
I know this is the developer’s first beta, so bugs are expected, but this is not a bug, but a matter of seeing the AI. I think that since Apple uses Gemini models to train its Apple Foundation models, it also gets its bad parts.
We all know many AI models, including Google Gemini, have a history of speculation, and that’s what’s happening here.
What should you do now?
The good news is that this is the first developer beta, so there’s a real chance Apple will get this out before the public beta hits in July. If you’re relying on this feature to dim faces, my advice is to hold off on the beta and stick with iOS 26 for now, when dimming still works as you’d expect.
If you’re already on iOS 27 and need to hide faces today, your safest bet is to use the old trick of using emoji to hide faces in photos. I sent feedback to Apple through the Feedback app, and I’d encourage you to do the same if you get into this.
The more reports Apple receives in advance, the better the chances of this being fixed before release. A tool that is meant to protect people’s privacy should not be inventing new people instead, and I hope this is one idea Apple comes up with quickly.
