I have heard that with the upgrade to Android 14, I can now generate AI wallpapers directly on my Pixel phone. Excellent! How do I get started, though, and can I create any image I can imagine?
The burst of AI activity in the last few years has been darn impressive and it’s now difficult to find an application or operating system that doesn’t have some level of integration. Windows might be the leader with its pervasive Copilot assistant, but it’s certainly popular with developers. Whether it’s popular with customers we’ll have to see!
One of the most exciting areas of generative AI is with image manipulation and creation. Used to be if I wanted to remove someone from the background of a photo, I needed to fire up the expensive Adobe Photoshop or struggle with less powerful tools. Now it’s a tap or two away, with Google’s work on the Photos app leading the pack with simple, effective, and useful capabilities. Including the ability to erase unwanted people and elements from photos, while still on your mobile device. Amazing!
These work because they’re operating in constrained areas; you’re not inventing a photo, you’re manipulating it. But pure image generation is just as impressive and at least 10% of the images you now see on social media are likely created by or significantly altered by AI-powered tools. Google’s taken that to heart and the AI Wallpaper feature in Android 14 does not give you free reign to create anything, instead offering categories and “tweakable” prompts. Let’s have a look.
FIND THE AI WALLPAPER SETTING IN ANDROID14
Start out by ensuring that your Android phone is fully updated. You can do that in Settings > System > Software Updates. While you’re in Settings, go back to the beginning then select “Wallpaper & Style“.
If you haven’t checked out this area in Android, it’s been improving update by update and is very nicely organized now. Easy to customize your lock screen and home screen. To find the AI feature, however, you need to tap on “More wallpapers” near the bottom of the display.
Quite a variety of options, including two poorly chosen soccer categories for me (I am a die-hard Tottenham Hotspur FC fan, Google!) 🙂
At the top is “AI wallpaper”. That’s what we seek. Tap on it.
Rather than have a prompt sitting and waiting for your artistic vision, it has a 15 or so different themes from which you can choose. On this screen are Imaginary, Painting, Night, and Terrain. The actual process is rather like a Mad Lib, as you’ll see. Me? I’m going to swipe across and choose the theme “Volcanic”.
CUSTOMIZING YOUR AI WALLPAPER
Once I choose a theme, it shows an image and the Mad Libs prompt: “An image of white lava with cool hues”. You can then tap on the key nouns to change them and tweak the output. For example, here are my color choices for the lava:
Rather than white lava, I’ll go for indigo by tapping that color. I can then see the options for the hues by tapping on “cool”:
Looks interesting enough that I’ll generate a couple of images by tapping “Create wallpaper“. First, a warning from Google:
You can’t sell the generated wallpapers, and your data privacy (what data? that I prefer indigo and warm hues?) is covered by the general Google Privacy Policy. Okay, I can live with that. A tap on “Let’s go” produces the first result:
Very nice result, but that sure isn’t indigo lava, it’s an indigo sky. AI, ya gotta love its imprecision. What’s more important to notice here is that this is one of four different wallpapers that the system’s created, as indicated by the four tiny dots. Swipe left to see the other options. Don’t like them? You can try changing a parameter or tap on “Inspire me“, which is a bit underwhelming given the very finite list of variations available:
Okay, so olive lava and cool hues is pretty nice. In fact, I’m going to use this particular wallpaper on my Pixel 8a.
TURNING THE AI IMAGE INTO YOUR WALLPAPER
To select a particular image, tap on the ✔︎ on the top right. You’ll be shown the wallpaper with your typical widgets and on-screen material:
Nice, right? You can check out how it would look on both your Lock screen and Home screen with the buttons along the bottom. Want to actually use it? Tap on “Set wallpaper” on the top right.
That’s pretty self-explanatory. I’m going to choose “Home and lock screens“. Done. Now my home screen definitely looks pretty sick!
Now it’s your turn. And don’t forget you can always use another AI image generating tool like Google Gemini, Dall-E, or Perplexity to create any wallpaper image you can imagine, copy it to your Android phone, then set it as your wallpaper if this feels a bit too constrained. I expect in the future there will be a lot more flexibility with the AI wallpaper feature, but for now, it’s pretty cool…
Pro Tip: There are lots of ways to manage your Android devices and ensure the best possible experience. Learn more by checking out my extensive Android help area while you’re here too!