'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
OnePlus phones are getting Google Pixels' best AI photography feature - sort of
If you're a OnePlus phone user, you could soon be getting a cool new AI feature.
The company today announced AI Eraser – a photo editing tool that lets you remove unwanted people, things, or imperfections from a photo.
Also: I tested 40 phones, and these are the very best
Starting in April, the feature will be rolled out gradually to OnePlus devices, the company said, including OnePlus 12, OnePlus 12R (ZDNET Senior Reviews Editor Kerry Wan's sleeper pick for best budget Android phone last year), OnePlus 11, OnePlus Open, and OnePlus Nord CE 4.
Like Google's Magic Eraser and Samsung's Object Eraser, the feature will enable users to tap on elements in a photo and use AI to remove those elements and fill in the empty space, creating what OnePlus described as "a replacement background that seamlessly blends into the surrounding environment while suiting the overall style of the image, resulting in flawless, picture-perfect images."
The company's press release offered a little insight into how this works: "Leveraging the power of artificial intelligence and a series of advanced algorithms, AI Eraser enables users to effortlessly select and remove unwanted objects" such as pedestrians, trash, or imperfections in the image.
By eliminating the need for complex manual editing or the use of dedicated photo editing software, according to OnePlus, AI Eraser makes image editing "accessible to all users regardless of previous photo editing experience."
Also: 3 reasons why I'm sold on the OnePlus 12 (and 1 reason for buyer's remorse)
You'll find the feature in the OnePlus Gallery app.
The OnePlus 12 launched earlier this year with no AI features, and while that's changing with this addition, more could be on the way.
Company president and COO Kinder Liu said this was just the first of several AI additions expected to come to OnePlus phones this year. Details weren't offered about what those features will be, but it seems likely they will be the same ones that rolled out in China last month, including an AI summarizer that listens to your phone calls and pulls key information to create a summary (think time and place for an appointment) and article summarizer, which simplifies the extraction of important information from articles you're reading.