If you’ve seen the anime-style Studio Ghibli images that people have been making with ChatGPT, you might be interested to know that Apple has integrated this feature into Image Playground in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe.
ChatGPT’s anime-style output in Image PlaygroundImage Playground doesn’t add new art styles designed by Apple, but it does support several ChatGPT Styles. Options include oil painting, watercolor, vector, anime, and print, which complement the existing Apple-created Animation, Illustration, and Sketch styles.
Anime, oil painting, and water color styles in Image PlaygroundThe ChatGPT options are similar to what you can get if you use ChatGPT 4o for image creation, and the anime style in particular is one that’s been popular on social media. In ChatGPT, you can type in any style you want, and Apple has a similar feature with the “Any Style” option. You can select “Any Style” and then add the descriptors that you want, even asking for a realistic image.
This was an image of a cat, and ChatGPT was asked to add a bird and make it realistic.You can create images based on text descriptions, or you can upload a photo to have it converted into the style of your choice. When using the ChatGPT option, you will need to give the okay for your iPhone to send the image to ChatGPT.
Vector, print, and any styles (specified as Van Gogh) in Image PlaygroundAs with standard Image Playground image generation, you can add in additional phrases to tweak the result that you get from ChatGPT. ChatGPT is fairly slow compared to Apple’s own on-device image generation capabilities in Image Playground, so expect to wait for the end result.
A photo combined with a text-based requestUnlike Apple’s Image Playground default styles, ChatGPT has no problem with copyrighted content. It will make an image that uses the Studio Ghibli style, or that features Elmo. You’re also welcome to include violence, so Elmo can be bloody and hold a knife. Technically, ChatGPT isn’t supposed to make violent images featuring children’s characters either, but there are simple wording tricks to get around that. Apple does warn before sending any images to ChatGPT, and it is made clear that it’s ChatGPT creating the images. ChatGPT has far fewer guardrails than Apple’s standard Image Playground tools, which is something to be aware of.
It is worth noting that creating images with ChatGPT uses up tokens, and if you have a free account, you won’t be able to create more than one or two. You’ll need a paid account to use the feature more frequently.
There is no limit on the number of images that you can generate using the built-in Image Playground options, and it is worth noting that Apple has one other new feature you can use, and that’s the “Genmoji” option. You can combine multiple emoji into a single Genmoji, a feature that’s new in iOS 26, or describe an emoji character to create something new. Genmoji does not work with photos, and it is a description-only setting. The Genmoji that you create can be added to your emoji keyboard so you can use them in Messages.
iOS 26 is available for developers right now, but Apple plans to release a public beta in July. The software will see a public launch in September alongside new iPhone models.
