Actually, there are plenty of tools doing just that available on market for years. They just have not been called AI
I never claimed that Apple invented this.
In fact if you know anything about Apple, they are almost never first to anything. However when they do something they usually get it right.
It should be pointed out that this is not a third party app (nor does it prevent people from downloading and using those). It is part of the operating system. There are no third-party watermarks, no limitations on how many times you can use it, no size limitations (as far as I can tell), no subscription fees, no advertisements, no nagging popups asking you to review it on the App Store, et cetera ad nauseam.
It is of course well integrated with the Photos app. And as part of iOS in the long run more people will probably end up using it instead of a third party app, just like the average person will use the built-in camera, built-in photo editor, etc. rather than a third party software solution.
Trust me, I used weird third party HDR apps on my iPod touch long before smartphone cameras natively shot HDR. I've tried a lot of these types of after-market photo/video apps on Macs, iDevices, and Windows boxes. Even today I still use Upscayl (ML-assisted photo upscaling) on both Macs and Windows boxes as well as a video upscaler with an RTX 3080Ti.
The point is that Apple is using some sort of machine learning algorithms on this Photo Cleanup tool and it works amazingly well for a first attempt. And this is all happening on a smartphone.
I will repeat myself and state that consumer AI innovation is being driven by smartphones not personal computers. Smartphones are the primary computing modality for consumers in 2024. They have been for many years now. That's why all of the consumer AI chatbots focus on launching smartphone apps before they show up on the desktop.
Have you tried the Claude for Anthropic desktop app for Windows? Of course you haven't. It doesn't exist. But the iOS app has existed for many months, has 11K ratings in the App Store.
Samsung has AI assisted photo editing tools for some of their handsets. I haven't tried them yet I wonder if they are going to copy Apple's implementation. It wouldn't be the first time...
In the end Joe Consumer is going to use what's on their phone rather than seek high and low for a third party app. I'm not talking about professional photographers, social media influencers and other power users. I'm talking about regular people, the primary customer base of Apple.