Late last fall, I put Apple’s just released Image Playground with iOS 18.2 to the test against Pixel Studio to see which AI image generator was better. Let’s just say that it was a one-sided win for Google that proved its AI-assisted image generator on its Pixel 9 phones is way better, both in how they look and their accuracy.
With the iOS 26 beta, I’ve been testing out the updated version of Image Playground to see all the new changes — but more importantly — if the upgrades are enough to make it better than Pixel Studio. Using an iPhone 16 Pro Max and Pixel 9 Pro XL for this test, running iOS 26 and Android 16 respectively, I provided both image generators with the same prompts as before to see what they produce this time around.
