The Star Trek Holodeck just got closer – Apple’s new AI tool generates 3D scenes from your photos in under a second for VR memories

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The Star Trek Holodeck just got closer – Apple’s new AI tool generates 3D scenes from your photos in under a second for VR memories News By Alex Blake published 18 December 2025

Your photos in a new dimension

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• Apple has released a new AI tool for generating 3D photos
• The tool can convert a 2D image to a 3D scene in under one second
• This could be an upgrade to the existing spatial photos tool in iOS

Remember when Apple introduced spatial Lock Screen photos in iOS 26? This feature added a stereoscopic effect to flat images on your Lock Screen, and it’s neat, if a little gimmicky. Now, though, Apple has revealed a new trick that takes the effect to an entirely new level – and it could be a brilliant addition to your Apple device if it gets a wider roll-out.

That new tool is called SHARP, and it’s just been unveiled in a research paper published by Apple. Titled “Sharp Monocular View Synthesis in Less Than a Second,” the paper outlines a new tool that can turn 2D images into 3D spatial scenes in under one second.

SHARP uses a neural network – artificial intelligence (AI), in other words – to quickly generate a 3D map of your image. That’s the part that is performed in less than a second. Once that’s complete, the image can be rendered in real time.

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Apple says it trained the model on around eight million synthetic images created in-house and 2.65 million licensed photographs, with the result that SHARP could learn to discern depth and scale and apply that knowledge to input images.

It does this while maintaining consistency when it comes to aspects like scale and distance, meaning you shouldn’t see the sorts of stretching and warping that can come about when performing a 2D-to-3D conversion. That’s key to maintaining immersion and producing a 3D image that users actually want to keep.

An evolution of spatial photos

Apple's SHARP model generates photorealistic 3D Gaussian reps from a single img in secs.GitHub: https://t.co/wU6yTWRdClPaper: https://t.co/xUtr40pEJ9SHARP enables photorealistic NVS from one photo by regressing 3D Gaussian params via single NN fwd pass (<1s on std GPU).… pic.twitter.com/Wo6EyZIPvLDecember 17, 2025

Right now, SHARP is more a proof-of-concept than a prime-time feature, and there’s no indication of when – or if – it will come to Apple’s devices. While it’s available to download on GitHub, it’s not yet baked into the likes of iOS 26 or macOS Tahoe.

That said, it seems like a natural evolution of the spatial photos feature that Apple has already released. If the Photos app on your iPhone will let you explore your images in this way, it could be an attractive selling point for a lot of people. Add it to the Vision Pro headset and it’ll be even more immersive.

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(Image credit: Apple)

All that said, SHARP does have some drawbacks. For one thing, it’s focused on rendering nearby scenes, meaning you can’t stray too far from the original viewpoint before fidelity starts to suffer.

But as a starting point, it’s certainly promising, especially when you consider how quickly it can operate. Don’t be surprised to see it roll out in Apple’s operating systems at some point in the future.

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Today's best Apple Vision Pro dealsApple Vision Pro SG$4,551ViewSee all pricesWe check over 250 million products every day for the best prices TOPICS Apple AI Alex BlakeSocial Links NavigationFreelance Contributor

Alex Blake has been fooling around with computers since the early 1990s, and since that time he's learned a thing or two about tech. No more than two things, though. That's all his brain can hold. As well as TechRadar, Alex writes for iMore, Digital Trends and Creative Bloq, among others. He was previously commissioning editor at MacFormat magazine. That means he mostly covers the world of Apple and its latest products, but also Windows, computer peripherals, mobile apps, and much more beyond. When not writing, you can find him hiking the English countryside and gaming on his PC.

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