Some of the best OnePlus phones will soon be getting AI tools, beginning with an ‘AI Eraser’, the first in a series of smart features that OnePlus says it’s bringing to its phones this year.
The AI Eraser will appear within the OnePlus Photos gallery app, and function like the Magic Eraser on Google Pixel phones, and the Object Eraser on the latest Samsung Galaxy handsets. This will allow you to highlight and remove unwanted objects or people from your photos, where the AI will attempt to fill the missing space to match the background seamlessly.
Which devices will get the upgrade – and when?
OnePlus says AI Eraser will be rolled out to phones including the OnePlus 12 – the company’s latest flagship – the mid-range OnePlus 12R, and the foldable OnePlus Open, from April and Europe later in Q2 2024.
The OnePlus 11 will also receive the AI Eraser. However, OnePlus phones and tablets that aren’t using Snapdragon chips, such as the OnePlus Pad and Nord 3 5G, which were released after the OnePlus 11, appear to be left out. OnePlus says it will provide further details of which devices will be upgraded and when, in due course.
OnePlus says it uses a proprietary AI model to power AI Eraser that it claims to have trained on “a vast dataset that allows it to comprehend complex scenes”. So we’re looking forward to testing the feature to see how effective it is compared to Google’s and Samsung’s tools.
OnePlus has shared before-and-after example images of a wedding scene. In the before shot, the hands of several guests are visible, and in the edited version these have been removed by the AI Eraser, and replaced by AI-generated background detail.
It’s hard to tell how effective the AI Eraser is based on a single demo image, and AI tools aren’t always perfect. While the edited image looks okay at first glance, a closer look reveals a couple of mistakes, including the bride's thumb being cut off, and some areas that have been generated to replace the guest's hands being removed looking incorrect.
Hopefully, OnePlus will provide more images of the feature in action, or a video, to give us a better idea of how effective it is.
More tools to come?
As mentioned, OnePlus says it plans to introduce more AI features this year, but it has not provided details. We could see further camera enhancements such as blur reduction tools or by extending the canvas area. We could also see note-taking, translation, or assistants enhanced by AI, although we’ll have to wait and see.
The OnePlus 12 launched without any mention of AI features in January, despite AI functionality being baked into the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s silicon. At the time fans noted that OnePlus seemed not to be adopting the same focus on AI as Google and Samsung, with some saying they preferred this approach.
However, with more phones incorporating AI features, and Apple is rumored to be focusing on AI this year, it’s not surprising to see OnePlus climbing on the bandwagon.
OnePlus has made a name for itself by offering flagship phones capable of challenging the best Android phones from industry giants like Google and Samsung, and by offering AI features previously exclusive to these established players OnePlus could become more competitive than ever.
