Phota Labs launches iOS app that uses AI to improve photos

In short: Phota Labs has launched a free iOS app that uses AI to automatically improve everyday photos while trying to keep people looking like themselves.

What happened

Phota Labs is a new iPhone app that acts like a personal photo assistant. Instead of giving you lots of manual editing sliders, it tries to handle the edits for you.

The company says the app can change how a photo is framed, for example by turning a wide group shot into a tighter portrait. It can also change the style of an image, from small touch-ups to bigger changes like a fisheye look or a different angle.

One common problem with AI photo tools is that they can change a person’s face, especially if the original photo is blurry. Phota Labs says it built its own “personalization” system that learns a person’s identity (basically, it studies what you look like) so it can keep faces consistent while improving the photo.

Edited photos include an invisible watermark, which is a hidden label that can tell some social platforms the image was changed by AI.

Phota Labs was founded by Cecilia Zhang and Zach Xia, who previously worked at Adobe on products including Lightroom and Photoshop. The startup raised a $5.6 million seed round led by a16z, and it says it plans to explore a paid plan later and release an Android version in the future.

Why it matters

Lots of people take tons of photos but never edit them because it takes time and skill. Tools like this aim to make “printable” photos from imperfect shots, but they also raise questions about how much AI should be allowed to change real memories.

Source: TechCrunch AI