OnePlus reveals first of many new AI features – is it coming to your phone?

AI is the buzzword throughout the technology world in 2024, and OnePlus clearly doesn’t want to be left out.

The Chinese smartphone maker has confirmed that a range of new artificial intelligence features are coming to its handsets, starting with AI Eraser.

As the name suggests, this is a photo editing tool which aims to seamlessly remove objects within an image and replace them with a realistic AI-generated background.

OnePlus specifically highlighted pedestrians, trash and imperfections as examples, claiming it can get rid of them and still deliver “flawless, picture-perfect images”.

In the supplied example below, the arms on the side of the first image have been removed to create a more aesthetically pleasing wedding photo:

On the face of it, this sounds a lot like Google’s Magic Editor, which is available within Google Photos on recent Pixel phones. While very impressive, Magic Editor is by no means perfect, so it’ll be interesting to see if OnePlus’ version is any better.

OnePlus says AI Eraser will be “rolled out gradually to OnePlus devices globally”, with the OnePlus 12, OnePlus 12R, OnePlus 11 and OnePlus Open all specifically mentioned.

It’s not clear if other OnePlus phones or the OnePlus Pad tablet will benefit either.

Rollout will begin this month, but European customers will have to wait until “later in Q2” – likely May or June.

OnePlus is describing “a new era of AI-driven, user-centric features”, so expect this to be the first of many. Even so, it already has some catching up to do with the likes of Samsung.