Yes and No. It can be startlingly good or mess up entirely. But AI is developing at warp speed and it will only get better. What it can't do now (Jan 2026) it will probably be able to do in 6 month's time. Mastery of "text prompts" is key.
I started by giving a "text prompt" to the AI bot (one of the best now embedded in Photoshop CC2026): "fill the kilts with Royal Stewart tartan". I thought AI had probably never heard of Royal Stewart tartan. To my surprise it did it instantly, obviously following the pattern in the grayscale. So I gave the same command for the ties and for the pipe bag on the left. Bingo. I gave it a command: "color the ivy on the wall darkish green. Do not color the concrete, leave it gray." It did that. I entered a text prompt: "Color the sash red on the tall man back centre" wondering if it would find the sash. It did.
Did it do it perfectly? No! I had to check every kilt and tie, and found significant areas that had been missed and had to be touched up. If I had carefully selected every kilt and tie, then entered the prompt, I might have had a better result. I had to select the entire sash before it filled it.
It fell down badly when I asked it to "colour all faces with natural flesh tones." I ended up with noses and eyes and ears in very odd places, strange half-faces on the wall, and no flesh tones at all. Careful selection of a face made no difference. It was faster to do it myself. I also had to do the hair colouring. Following a text prompt the drums turned light brown, but I had to extract the cords and drumheads and colour them separately. Had I been more precise with my text prompts that might not have been necessary.
Conclusion. AI is great tool in photo restoration and can be a real time-saver on large areas of anything that has holes or tears or stains. But - at this stage - don't let it loose on portraits or faces. A face can end up looking like someone else - and that's not what you want in the restoration of a well-loved and well-known face.
Many artists who work in restoration agree that AI isn't there yet!
There a growing expectation around that photo restorations can all be left to AI. Yes, if the details don't matter and you don't care what colour the clothes are, and you don't mind faces changing. In photo-restoration AI is a helpful tool but as a restorer I can't pass the job onto a bot and expect it to do it all for me. No one would pay me!
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