I tried the AI-powered Extend photo trick in iOS 27, and it exceeded my expectations.

I wasn’t one of the first to install the iOS 27 developer beta, but when I did, I started to appreciate the changes Apple made. The Photos app, in particular, got its biggest upgrade yet, adding an improved Cleanup tool, Rearrangement, and a new Extend feature, which I was very eager to try.

After spending some time with it on my iPhone 17, here’s how the tool has fared so far. Spoiler alert: it’s one of the most important additions to Apple’s small lineup of AI features. I tried this feature on a few different photos, including a selfie I took in front of a dam in northern India, photos of food items on the table, and photos taken indoors and outdoors.

How to use the new Extension tool?

To use the new Expand feature, open the photo you want in the Photos app, tap the hamburger menu at the bottom of the screen, select Tools, and tap Expand (marked by the arrow below). From there, you can pinch to reverse the image, adjust the crop, and reposition the frame to stretch the image in any direction or aspect ratio.

I really like how the Extend feature is built into the Crop tool. In this way, the feature feels very intuitive, especially since most iPhone users are used to cropping photos. Once you’re in the Crop tool, click to rotate the image or adjust the frame to your liking, and the Extend option should appear below. In my experience, the feature takes about 10 to 15 seconds to generate a new image.

Rough around the edges

Depending on how big a frame you ask it to produce, it can produce multiple versions of the same image, as you can see with my mango cake. I added an orange gradient so you can easily see which part of the image is stretched.

In the first result, for example, the cake on the other side of the table never existed, or the person in the background never existed. The last photo shows the edge of another plate on the left that was missing from the first one. While extensions for existing objects are nice (like a plastic spoon), you may be able to see those added by Apple Intelligence.

Take this picture for example. I shrunk it to the center of the frame so that the Extend AI would work across the frame, and the result was, well, telling. Look at the tables and chairs at the top of the frame: they look dim and almost dreamy. To be honest, the bags (grey and black) don’t look good on me either. The AI-generated plates on the left have a slightly different color as well.

Another example of how weird and AI-like a picture can look. It is extended from all sides, which may be why the bushes at the top, the flower towards the left, the long leaves are added to the bottom, and more flowers in the right view, it is good, a little funny or fun. Of the four people I sent this photo to, only one said it was real, and three were able to read it easily.

Some results, however, were better than I expected

I have come across a few images where the tool refuses to expand on certain tracks. Some of the images had human subjects oriented towards growth, so that could be a deliberate limitation, but I couldn’t figure out why some did. This feature requires an active Internet connection and may not work with low-speed wireless networks.

However, putting such examples aside, I have a few others where Extend does a great job. Check out my friend’s photo below (from her birthday in May).

I shot this with a Nikon mirrorless camera. The growth rate of production is really good in this case, so that even he could not distinguish. The bushes in the lower left lose their texture in the enlarged area, but everything else looks fine.

The silhouette towards the bottom of the tree and the plants in the foreground are very well composed. However, the leaves above gave the illusion.

This is an equally impressive arrangement. Apple Intelligence produced the person in the background with the right amount of detail (he was already blurry due to the depth of field of the lens), to look realistic, as well as the reflection in the right mirror.

This is one of my favorite images from the Extend feature. The way it fills the texture from the water bed (looking left) to the mountains in the background and the canopy stand is simply outstanding. It added a car to the right and made my arm look weird, but other than that, it works great for social media posting.

It’s the same with this. Those who weren’t there can’t tell if the gift box below or the lamp in front of the wall hanging on the left is real. The door to the right and the slightly visible seat behind me were completely absent. In fact, if you notice the ceiling, you will see how Apple Intelligence has bent slightly to reproduce the effect of lens-eye or wide-angle.

This is one of the neatest Extend programs I can find. There aren’t many subjects in the picture, which is probably why they are so good, but still, they are clean and accurate.

Overall, I’ve had a good experience with Extend so far. It’s not perfect, as some effects still show clear AI artifacts, but most effects hold up surprisingly well. In fact, I would go so far as to rely on it for general editing, especially when I need to add a wider perspective to the images. Edited photos also appear tagged in the Photos app (once you swipe up to view metadata), which is nice too.