Apple Intelligence has restrictions on what art you can ask it to create in Image Playground and Genmoji — but CNET’s Bridget Carey has some tips on how to get around it. Although things get weird. (Results may vary.)

Apple’s image generation AI has some heavy restrictions on what it allows you to create, but I have found there are ways to get around the limitations and the guardrails just a bit. And other times you use it, you’re gonna be surprised with nightmare fuel, but I’ll get back to that in a second. iOS 18.2 is in the wild. It has some of Apple’s most anticipated Apple intelligence features, including. Image playground and Genmoji. These are tools to generate art of objects and environments or caricatures of people or unique emoji in the style of Apple’s standard emojis. Just type in some descriptive words and bam, it makes the art on the spot. Now this whole season of iOS 18 updates has been quite the learning curve. So let’s go over some interesting things to know about using these new. Image generating features. That is if you have a device that can handle Apple intelligence. In fact, why don’t I ask Image Playground to make a little graphic for the show? OK, I’m Bridget Carey, and this is my weekly Apple show. One tour Moyer. No, one thong more. Excuse me, one more mayor, one more more one more thing. Yeah, we’ll go with that. Close enough. Apple is gradually releasing its AI tools on the iPhone, the iPad, and Mac with operating system updates. Now most of what I’ll be showing is from iOS 18.2 that I am making with my iPhone 16, but you can also create this stuff on a Mac or iPad. Now let’s start with Image playground. This is a separate app to create cartoon style art. You put a word into the machine, let’s try party hat and Presto Chao, you. You get several party hats so you can save the one you like the best. This might be good for when you’re doing a book report and you just need a simple object to put in your paper, like back in the clip art days. You can also make caricatures of people found in your photos app, but you can only have one person in the photo at a time, and it keeps it restricted to the top half of their body. Now the weird fun begins when you start adding multiple descriptive words. Or give the person props. Let’s show me eating spaghetti. What could go wrong? Yeah, it turns out a lot can go wrong with fingers and forks. If you want real chaos, try adding something like a violin, fingers and strings and bows all converging and floating. Yeah, the more complicated it is, the more you might need to try a few times or just know that it’s not that good yet at doing complicated. details. Now the system is gonna push back on some words that it wants you to avoid because I think Apple doesn’t want you making some troublesome concepts into art, but if you get creative, you might get around the blocks. Sometimes words are blocked because of copyright. For example, you can’t make Godzilla rampaging through the city, but you could type in large lizard monster in New York City breathing fire, and you can get something. If it’s looking too cutesy for you, I want you to go down to the plus sign and switch it to illustration mode. It’s more of a drawing that might help get closer to what you want. Let’s say I wanted to make myself into a Star Wars Jedi. Funny enough, Lightsaber does work, but Jedi doesn’t, so I put in Wizard and Sunset and turned to illustration, and I got a lightsaber through my head. Or how about one on top of my head? It’s Saint Bridget of the Galactic Church, yeah. This is why Apple says it’s in beta, but don’t let beta stop you from bending reality. And one example, I wanted to make myself into a witch. Now it just didn’t do anything when I use the word witch, but you can work with similar words like wizard and black hat and pointy hat and start to get somewhere. In the spirit of the movie Wicked, I tried to make my skin green, but it wouldn’t change my skin. But then I told it I wanted green face paint, and that kind of worked. Look at me. I’m defying guardrails. If you’re making a caricature of someone you know, uh, sometimes it could be hard to generate different emotions unhappy, at least for me, I couldn’t get it to show me as angry or sad or scared. I got it to give me red eyes, I guess. I got close to mad when I used illustration mode on myself and it was not flattering, but sometimes it does work. It depends on the person, I guess. If you want a mad face, you can always go with a generic cartoon. The trouble is when you want it to look like someone in your own photo album. Oh, and here’s a tip. You can save an image you make an image playground, and then go back later to add or keep editing it. You don’t have to start over again. I saved this cute one of my kid drinking chocolate milk, but it got the eye color wrong, so I can go back, edit, see the original words I used to make it and add or subtract descriptions to tweak it. It tends to do average hair and eye colors, so you have to adjust some things manually. And if you are working inside of a note, you can generate an image right inside your note. That could be handy also on the iPad. So if I’m taking notes on a report, let’s say for frogs and I make this little doodle, then I go to drawing tools, I select this rainbow stick. It’s called an image wand, and you draw a circle around something you want to look better. Genoji is a whole other tool, and it operates kind of similar to Image playground, but you do it all inside the emoji keyboard. And you also need to get creative to break through guardrails. When you are searching for an emoji, you want to click this rainbow smiley face and start typing your descriptive words. It’s easy to whip up an emoji that Always wanted but never could have like say a drone or white wine or a broken robot. At one point I wondered, could I make myself wearing Minnie Mouse ears? But of course it can’t do anything with that phrase. It’s a Disney thing. But when I type in black mouse ears with black headband and red polka dot bow, well, it does do the job. The simple ones sometimes can be the most mental. When I searched for a melting computer, things just got deranged. And why is it a Windows computer? If you want to look sad in your own personal emoji, you can’t just type sad. That won’t work. But I could instead add crying tears. Just know the tears might go anywhere. You can use human feelings and. Description to get really weird. This is what I got when I typed in liquid fear. And sometimes it throws in extra visual elements that you didn’t expect. I asked for a spiky yellow heart, and I got bonus blood splatter. Oh, so metal. And when I typed in newspaper, it gave me a sad face sparkle. Oh, how magically depressing. These systems do not understand common concepts of childish humor. I typed in P because I am immature, and I got this nightmare liquid box face. Cool, cool. Well, have fun now while you can in this beta phase and save the strange stuff you make as a sticker. Click the three dots and save it to stickers to. Used later. Now if someone sends you a weird one, you can press down on the emoji in iMessages and select emoji details. That’s how you will see the words someone used to make their creation, like sad pony plane ride. Thanks, Scott. You can save it to your own list if you want to use it later. I don’t know how long we’re all going to be goofing around with these. I mean, we’re not really using those animated animal emojis anymore. Genmoji could take the same path. It might be a silly thing that comes and goes, or it could be something that is shared for a laugh with your friends. But if you have tips or things you have learned in your tinkering, share it in the comments below, and I’ll see you next time when there’s one more thing or one Thor more. Whichever comes first.