Photos clean up needs network connection

Clean Up is pretty cool! The only complaint I've seen is that the Retouch tool was removed-- to be replaced, apparently, by Clean Up. But everyone wants Retouch back, as well. The writing/proof reading tools are pretty useful, as well.

As léonie suggested, it sounds like Apple Intelligence is not fully loaded, somehow. If you look at System Settings>Apple Intelligence, is AI turned on? To be functional, I think I remember that the computer has to be re-booted, and that's always a good thing to try.

 When something goes wrong, I narrow things down by going through these steps:

• Restart the computer (of course)
• Re-start in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this: 

           Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support 

Those are the easiest things to try first. Then try these:

• Use another library if you have one, or make a small test Library with a few pictures in it and see if the same thing happens. You can create a new Library by closing Photos and then option-clicking on the Photos icon.
• Make a new user and see if the same problem recurs with it
• Rebuild your Photos Library--close Photos and re-launch by option-command-clicking the app icon.

The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.

Let us know what happens with this…

I just tried turning off wifi and then using Clean Up on a couple of pictures. It worked the same as when wifi was turned on.

It's all new to me! Have you gotten Clean Up to work at all. I wonder if it's not yet fully installed on your Mac…

The network connection is needed to install the AI tools for the clean-up feature.