Apple Intelligence to Introduce Custom Playlist Artwork Feature for Apple Music Users
This would be another development of Apple to personalize and creativity within its ecosystem as the new feature that could arrive with iOS 18. Reported earlier today by 9to5Mac, a new Apple Music feature allows users to create custom Playlist Artwork using the company’s AI-powered tools and intelligence, including Apple Intelligence. This novel feature exemplifies Apple’s long-running mission to humanize artificial intelligence and render richer, more personalized devices.
What Happens With The New Custom Playlist Artwork Feature
The new custom playlist artwork feature will be powered by Apple’s Image Playground, an AI-assisted image generation tool announced at WWDC 2024. Image Playground provides a way to generate images from text prompts alone. Based on these prompts, the AI produces a number of possibilities for what that art can look like, and end-users choose which design they prefer. Discovered in the iOS 18 beta, Apple is apparently adding a “Create Image” button while editing an Apple Music playlist. Upon pressing, this button will initiate the Image Playground tool that allows users to produce personalized art for their playlists. While the goal is to cater to different types of art (for example, animation, illustration, and sketch), this will not include photorealistic image generation at this point. In particular, if a user wants artwork to match the description of “sunset over mountains in watercolor style,” they can type this prompt, and various options will be generated. Essentially, this degree of customization enables users to design their visuals completely differently and perfectly matched with the mood and theme of playlists.
The Present and Future Availability of Album Artwork Customization on Apple Music
As you know, Apple recently introduced the choice to customize playlist artwork—a feature that should start appearing for most users with iOS 14.1 or later installed. The upcoming custom artwork feature is a dramatic evolution of this, utilizing AI to provide further customization choices. Nevertheless, as this feature is in the development stage, there is no timeline for its release. Ongoing delays in the development of Apple Intelligence may reportedly push its release past the initial iOS 18 rollout. Therefore, it is possible that Apple Music subscribers may have to wait for future updates to access AI-driven custom playlist artwork options.
The custom playlist artwork tool is just one of several Apple-owned AI tools that will be included in iOS 18. New surfaces are home screens, control center, and also the app icons with a redesigned interface. That will be the case, for instance, with Apple Intelligence—as new features could allow a dozen first-party applications, including Photos (better object recognition), Safari, and Messages, to play up their AI capabilities. It is worth mentioning that version iOS 18 public beta will not bring the company’s overarching AI assistant framework named Apple Intelligence. Instead, Apple intends to debut these features later in the year when it can iron out any remaining development hiccups. A few of the highlights in iOS 18 include satellite texting, call transcription, and peer-to-peer payments. Apple has also released public betas for iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11 to run alongside iOS 18, with all of the new OSes expected to see a broader launch sometime in September.
What This Means for Apple Music Users
To the extent that Apple Music is concerned, custom-playlist artwork generated by AI extends a new lease of life to its creative individuals. This gives users more freedom with their music experience as they are able to match every lyric of the song in colorful visuals using Apple’s template for making such. That long-term view is reflected in this new feature and also highlights how Apple sees AI as playing an important role across its product lines going forward. As AI experiments continue in the industry, Apple wants to use this technology so that it is more intuitive and personalized for a better user experience. While we continue to wait for the full release of iOS 18 and these soon-to-launch new features, its role in developing Apple Intelligence is evident that it will redefine our relationship with technology. From creating playlists to editing photos, from controlling messages to much more, everything is going to have some associated Artificial Intelligence resulting in another level of creative and productive aspect for the users corresponding to the Apple ecosystem.