AI Photo Tools: What They Can Do and How to Use Them Safely

Your phone’s camera app has gotten a lot smarter over the past couple of years. Many phones can now remove a stranger from the background of your holiday photo, brighten a dark face, or fix a blurry shot, without you opening a separate editing program.

These features usually have the word “AI” attached to them somewhere in the menu. That can sound intimidating, but the tools themselves are often just a few taps.

In this guide, we will walk through what these AI photo tools actually do, which ones are real and available right now, and what to think about before you let an app edit or store your photos.

Can AI Really Remove People or Objects From Your Photos?

Yes, several phone photo apps can now remove an unwanted person or object from a picture with a few taps, using a feature often called an “eraser” or “object removal” tool. The best known version is Magic Eraser inside the free Google Photos app.

You draw a circle or tap around the thing you want gone (a stranger walking through your family photo, a trash can, a cord on the floor). The app studies the pixels around that spot and fills in a believable replacement, based on the rest of the picture.

Where This Started: Magic Eraser and Magic Editor

Google built Magic Eraser into its Pixel phones first. In February 2023, Google announced that Magic Eraser was expanding to every Google One subscriber on both Android and iPhone, not just Pixel owners, according to the Google Blog’s Magic Eraser announcement. That means if you have an iPhone and pay for a Google One storage plan, you can install the free Google Photos app and use Magic Eraser too.

Google went further with Magic Editor, announced alongside the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro in October 2023, according to Google’s Pixel 8 Pro launch announcement. Magic Editor can move a person to a different spot in the photo, resize them, or change the sky and background, filling in the gaps with a generated image instead of just erasing.

How Magic Eraser and Magic Editor Compare

Beyond Erasing: Other “AI Enhanced” Camera Features You Will See

Erasing objects is only one part of what people mean by “AI photo tools.” Most modern phone cameras now use AI in smaller, quieter ways every time you take a picture.

• Auto light and color balance. The camera adjusts brightness and color on its own, so a photo taken in a dim room or bright sun still looks even.
• Portrait blur. The phone uses AI to figure out which part of the photo is the person and which part is the background, then blurs the background to make the subject stand out.
• Noise reduction. Grainy, speckled photos taken in low light get smoothed out automatically.
• Face and smile detection. Some phones pick the clearest, best-timed frame from a burst of photos so nobody is caught blinking.

None of these require you to press an extra button. They happen in the background the moment you tap the shutter, which is part of why “AI-enhanced” photos have become so common without most people noticing the shift.

Do You Need a Certain Phone to Use These Tools?

You do not need a Pixel phone to try an AI eraser tool. As covered above, Google One subscribers can use Magic Eraser in the Google Photos app on an iPhone or almost any Android phone.

Magic Editor’s more advanced background and repositioning tricks are, for now, built into the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. If you have a different phone, you may still see similar “AI enhance” or “remove object” buttons appear in your phone’s own camera or gallery app. Read the fine print in that app to see whether editing happens on your phone or is sent off to a company’s servers.

What Happens to Your Photo When an AI Tool Edits It?

When you are not using a Pixel phone, most AI photo edits are processed on the company’s servers, not just on your phone. That means a copy of your photo, including anyone’s face in it, briefly travels over the internet to be edited.

This is not unusual or unsafe on its own. It is how many everyday apps work. It is still worth knowing, especially for photos that show your home address, mail with your name on it, a license plate, or your grandchildren’s faces.

A simple habit that helps: before you upload any photo to an editing app, including for something like our AI photo restoration guide, take a moment to check what is actually visible in the background.

There is a second, quieter privacy detail worth knowing. Many phone photos already carry hidden location information (the exact spot where the picture was taken) saved inside the file itself, well before any AI tool touches it. Editing a photo with an AI tool does not automatically strip that information out. If you are sharing a photo of your home publicly, it is worth checking your phone’s share settings for an option to remove location data first.

Could Someone Use These Tools to Trick You?

Yes, and this is worth taking seriously. The same generative AI technology that can politely erase a photobomber from your vacation photo can also be used to alter a photo in a misleading way, or to create one that never happened at all.

The Federal Trade Commission warned about this directly in a 2023 blog post about AI-generated deepfakes, noting that “a growing percentage of what we’re looking at is not authentic, and it’s getting more difficult to tell the difference,” according to the FTC’s Chatbots, deepfakes, and voice clones post. The FTC’s point was mainly aimed at companies, but the warning applies to everyday life too: a photo is no longer automatic proof that something happened exactly as shown.

This matters most when a photo arrives attached to an urgent request, such as a picture of a grandchild supposedly hurt or in trouble, sent by someone asking for money fast. If you have not already, it is worth reading our guide on setting up a family safe word to stop AI voice-clone scams, since the same caution applies to photos as much as phone calls.

For more everyday habits like this one, our Scam-Stopper Kit (free when you join our email letter) walks through the most common tricks step by step.

A second habit that helps: if a photo feels suspicious (a “prize” you supposedly won, a “damaged package,” or an unfamiliar person claiming to be in trouble), save the image and search for it using your phone’s or computer’s reverse image search option. If the same picture shows up on unrelated websites or old news stories, that is a strong sign it has been reused or altered.

A Simple Checklist Before You Use an AI Photo Tool

• Only download photo editing apps from the official Apple App Store or Google Play Store.
• Check whether the app processes your photo on your phone or sends it to a server (the app’s help pages or settings usually say).
• Avoid editing or sharing photos that show a home address, license plate, or personal document in the background.
• Do not treat a photo as proof of an emergency without confirming with the person directly by phone.
• If an app or pop-up asks you to pay for an AI photo feature you did not go looking for, treat it as a possible scam and close it.

If you want a broader refresher on which AI tools are worth your time as an older adult, our guide on what seniors can use AI for is a good next stop, along with our plain-language piece on how to explain AI to an older person if you are helping a parent or friend get comfortable with these ideas.

Where to go from here

AI photo tools like Magic Eraser and Magic Editor are useful for cleaning up everyday pictures, as long as you know what is happening behind the scenes. Our book AI for Seniors covers this and other everyday AI tools in plain, step-by-step language, with no jargon and no assumptions about what you already know.