Apple added the Clean Up feature with the iOS 18.1 update. While the main purpose of this feature was to remove unwanted objects from your shots, it could also be used to hide faces in photos. You just circled a face in the photo, and it would automatically blur it. Apple called it Identity protection.
With the iOS 27 update, Apple has improved the Clean Up feature, and now it can clear even more complex scenes. However, with this improvement comes a caveat. In the first beta, the hide faces feature is not working. Instead, it’s doing something which is both funny and alarming.
What happens when you blur a face in iOS 27?
I only found this by accident. I was cleaning up a photo before posting it and went to blur out a face. I opened a photo, selected the Clean Up tool, and circled a face just like I always had. On the first few attempts, it outright lied to me.
It tells me that the identity protection has been applied. But as you can see in the screenshot, the face is clearly visible. So I tried to force its hand. Instead of circling the face, I painted over it with my finger. That’s when a strange thing happened.
Instead of blurring the face or removing it, it created a brand new face. Yes, it gave the person in the photo a new face, and it did such a convincing job that if I shared the photo with anyone, they wouldn’t be able to tell that the original face had been replaced with an AI-generated one.
Just to make sure that I am not hallucinating or it’s a freak event, I tried to replicate this with multiple photos of different people, and the same thing happened every time. If I circle a face, it would lie to me that the face has been blurred, and if I paint over it, it would generate a completely new face.
I know this is the first developer beta, so bugs are expected, but this is not a bug, but a case of AI hallucination. I think since Apple is using Gemini models to train its Apple Foundation Models, it’s also getting the bad parts of it.
We all know most AI models, including Google Gemini, have a history of hallucinations, and that’s what might be happening here.
What should you do for now?
The good news is this is the first developer beta, so there’s a real chance Apple catches this before the public beta lands in July. If you rely on this feature to blur faces, my advice is to hold off on the beta and stick with iOS 26 for now, where the blur still works the way you expect.
If you’re already on iOS 27 and need to hide a face today, your safest bet is to use the old trick of using an emoji to hide faces in photos. I’ve sent feedback to Apple through the Feedback app, and I’d encourage you to do the same if you run into this.
The more reports Apple gets early, the better the odds this gets fixed before release. A tool meant to protect people’s privacy shouldn’t be inventing new people instead, and I hope this is one hallucination Apple irons out fast.