Apple Intelligence is about to be released, but it’s still a work in progress.
Nearly half a year after Apple first introduced Apple Intelligence features at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), the company will finally roll them out on Monday.
Users who have the iPhone 15 Pro or any iPhone 16, as well as iPads and Macs with Apple’s M-series chips, will be able to try Apple AI after downloading the iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and MacOS Sequpia 15.1 update.
Apple AI will launch in the United States and expand to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK in December. Users in Europe and other countries will be able to try new features only next year.
However, some of the best Apple AI tools, such as Siri's ability to understand contextual information and implement actions across various apps on users' behalf, will not be available with the first update and stretch out into next year.
Contrary to some of its competitors, Apple is not rushing to implement AI tools, saying that it wants to prioritize privacy and responsibility.
“You could put something out there and have it be sort of a mess. Apple’s point of view is more like, ‘Let’s try to get each piece right and release it when it’s ready,’” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal.
In the interview, he denied that Apple is behind in the AI race. However, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, in his newsletter prior to the interview, pointed out that Apple internally believes that it’s two years behind its competitors in the AI race. If so, there is a lot of catching up to do.
Even though only a handful of Apple Intelligence tools are available with the upcoming update, some of them are handy and useful.
Let’s take a look at all of the Apple Intelligence features that will be officially rolled out this Monday.
Notification summaries
One of the most time-saving of these new tools appears to be summarization and prioritization of messages.
Users will be able to read summaries of messages across various apps instead of opening messages and reading the first lines.
Meanwhile, Focus will surface only the notifications that might need immediate attention, as well as prioritize messages in Mail.
While time-saving, AI-written summaries can also be quite brutal and funny. Take the story of a software developer who tried Apple Intelligence in beta and reported learning about a breakup with his girlfriend via message.
“No longer in a relationship; wants belongings back from the apartment,” Apple’s summary read.
Writing tools and transcriptions
Writing tools are another Apple Intelligence feature that may make users be more productive. Writing assistance will allow you to rewrite, proofread, and summarize text across Mail, Notes, Pages, and third-party apps.
Though it probably won’t leave a lasting impression on users, as many tools offer free writing assistance.
The advantage of Apple’s AI will be that it will enable writing more conveniently without third-party software.
Similar writing tools, released this year with the launch of Galaxy S24 and expanded to more premium devices a few months ago, are already available on Galaxy AI-capable Samsung devices.
In addition to providing assistance with writing, Apple Intelligence will allow users to record, transcribe, and summarize audio in Notes and Phone apps.
Only slightly improved Siri
Smarter Siri was supposed to be among the best features of Apple Intelligence. However, Apple's virtual assistant doesn’t appear to be that smart right now.
With the official release of Apple Intelligence, Siri gets a new design and, according to Apple, can follow along when users stumble over their words and can maintain context from one request to the next.
It can also understand written text and answer questions about the features and settings of Apple devices.
Compared to what Apple promised during WWDC, though, its capabilities are very limited. It can not yet take action across multiple apps on your behalf and remember the names and addresses mentioned months ago.
Editing photos
The latest iOS and iPadOS release also brings a few enhancements to the Photos app.
The new Clean Up feature will use AI to remove objects from your pictures. A similar tool, Magic Eraser, has been available for Android users since last year.
In addition, the Memories feature in the Photos app now enables users to create movies by simply typing a description, while voice queries can be used to search for specific photos or moments in videos.
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