Millions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac users will unlock Apple Intelligence with a free software update next month.
The flagship AI tools will be included as part of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1, which will become available in October. However, Apple Intelligence will be limited to US English at first, with a release date for the UK English version currently scheduled for December.
Alongside UK English, localised versions for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa will also debut at the same time.
Because of the sheer amount of processing that's required to take place on-device, Apple Intelligence will only be available on devices with relatively recent chipsets. To unlock Apple Intelligence, you'll need one of the following:
- iPhone 16
- iPhone 16 Plus
- iPhone 16 Pro
- iPhone 16 Pro Max
- iPhone 15 Pro
- iPhone 15 Pro Max
- iPad with M1 or newer
- Mac with M1 or newer
Apple Intelligence can proofread your writing, rewrite text to alter the tone, summarise lengthy paragraphs into bullet points, and generate never-before-seen images and emoji based on your written prompts. Just by describing a specific image in natural language, Apple Intelligence is able to trawl through your photo library to find a specific photo — or a moment in a video clip.
It'll also intelligently sort through an endless stack of notifications based on which ones it believes are most important, prioritising time-sensitive notifications like a taxi waiting outside or parcel delivery tracking, and those with a serious subject matter, like an email about a doctors appointment.
It will also enable features like Genmoji, which will generate never-before-seen emoji characters on your iPhone based on a short written prompt. Alongside a new glowing Siri animation, these features weren't ready in time to ship with the release of iOS 18 on September 16.
When Apple Intelligence becomes available, it will bring a new rainbow-like animation to Siri, and the ability to generate custom emoji characters with a text prompt, as well as a slew of other features in iOS 18
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Apple Intelligence promises a more "personal" experience than rival AI systems like ChatGPT, since Apple can tap into data stored inside apps like Maps, Mail, and Messages to tailor its responses. This information will be used to add context, so if you refer to a spouse or sibling in your request, Apple Intelligence will check your contacts and other corners of iOS to determine who you're talking about.
It can also trawl through text messages or email to find details — like a flight number — and find whether it's delayed or not, without the need to spell-out the exact details in your request. It's all very clever stuff and is one of the core components of the latest iPhone models, including the all-new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, which launch on September 20.
As well as being supercharged with new Apple Intelligence capabilities, Siri is treated to a lick of paint. Summoning the AI assistant will see a glowing rainbow effect swirl around the borders of your screen
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Apple Intelligence will also be the backbone of a supercharged new version of Siri. The virtual assistant, which has been baked into every iPhone since October 2011, can now adjust system settings, pull together information from multiple apps to answer a request, and perform actions inside iOS apps.
Instead of constantly jumping between apps, the all-new Siri promises to tie everything together.
For example, if you're looking at a photograph, you can ask Siri "add this to my note about Dad's Birthday". Apple Intelligence uses context from data on your iPhone to identify who you're referring to as well as the relevant note in your Notes app. And then, Siri will paste the photo in the right place.
If you're unsure whether you added that appointment you were discussing in Messages to your calendar, Siri can scour conversation history and information in other apps to find what you need.
Apple Intelligence will prioritise the notifications that it believes are most timely and important to you, offering summaries to help you skim-read long or stacked notifications after a long period without checking your iPhone
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What Can Apple Intelligence Do?
Apple has developed a number of AI models under the Apple Intelligence banner to enable new functionality across its iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Some of these tricks are accessed via new applications, menus within your favourite apps, or via voice assistant Siri.
These are some of the new tricks — although this list is far from exhaustive.
- Writing Tools can proofread and rewrite your text and adjust the tone
- Suggest Smart Replies in emails and text messages
- Automatically Transcribe recordings in the Voice Memos app
- Priority Notifications will reorder notifications based on context clues
- Automatically Summarise notifications into a quick debrief
- Sort thousands of emails into categories, dubbed Priority Messages in Mail
- Genmoji creates bespoke emoji characters in the Apple style from your prompt
- Image Playground dreams up new images in three styles: animation, illustration, sketch
- Search for elements within individual frames of a longer video in the Photos app
- Remove unwanted people and objects from photos with Clean-Up
- Sirican interact with items on-screen, like adjust settings or editing photos
- Use ChatGPT-4o within Siri to generate new text, poetry, computer code, and more
Wherever possible, Apple Intelligence tasks will be handled on-device by the dedicated Neural Engine in the latest A- and M- processors — so you won't need any signal or Wi-Fi to take advantage of these new capabilities.
Of course, there is a limit to what can be achieved by these chipsets. When you've asked something that needs a little extra processing power, the Californian company will rope-in servers powered by its M-series chipsets that have been built for the launch of Apple Intelligence in the coming months.
Apple says data is never stored in its Apple Intelligence servers, communication between your device and its servers will be encrypted, and independent security experts will be able to inspect the code that runs on Apple silicon servers in these servers to verify privacy.
Image Playground is accessible from a number of Apple-developed apps, like Messages and Pages. Apple has also created a standalone Image Playground app to generate never-before-seen images based on your input
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A new standard, dubbed Private Cloud Compute, will block any requests from an iPhone, iPad, and Mac unless the sever's software has been publicly logged for inspection.
Speaking during Apple's annual developer conference earlier this summer, CEO Tim Cook said: "Our unique approach combines generative AI with a user’s personal context to deliver truly helpful intelligence. And it can access that information in a completely private and secure way to help users do the things that matter most to them. This is AI as only Apple can deliver it, and we can’t wait for users to experience what it can do."
Apple has developed bespoke AI models to enable Apple Intelligence.
When asked about the data used to build these models, Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi says that it used the "highest quality data that we can from the public web".
"We do that in a way where publishers can opt out of having their work data used in training models. In addition to that, we license news archives, textbooks, stock photography and all of that goes into these models," the Apple executive revealed in a fireside chat with John Giannandrea in the Steve Jobs Theatre.
But there are limits to what Apple Intelligence can do — specifically when it comes to many of the creative flourishes seen in the latest ChatGPT model, such as dreaming up poetry and recipes from a brief written prompt. Rather than pour resources into replicating these capabilities, Apple will partner with other AI firms.
ChatGPT-4o is the first third-party model to be tied into iOS, macOS, and iPadOS.
Using Siri as the conduit, the partnership with OpenAI unlocks all of the usual tricks you'd expect from ChatGPT, including the ability to dream up new recipes from a list of ingredients, travel itineraries, job interview questions, essays, and much more.
You can also send photographs to provide extra context for ChatGPT.
Siri will always warn you before it sends anything to ChatGPT-4o. As part of the agreement, iPhone owners won't need to set up an account with OpenAI and no request sent from Siri will be logged — something that controversial billionaire Elon Musk seems to have misunderstood.
If Apple Intelligence can't handle a particular request, Siri can send it to ChatGPT to process
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Speaking about the possibilities of Apple Intelligence, Craig Federighi said: "This is AI for the rest of us. Personal intelligence you can rely on at work, home and everywhere in between. This is the beginning of an exciting new chapter of personal intelligence. Intelligence built for your most personal products: your iPhone, iPad and Mac. Intelligence grounded in the things that make you, you and intelligence available to you system-wide so that you can get things down in a way that works for you.
“We are just getting started and I hope you are as excited as I am for the road ahead.”
Apple Intelligence will launch alongside the latest operating system upgrades for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Not every device that can be updated to the latest software will be able to use Apple Intelligence. Since Apple will be processing so many of your requests on-device, there's a minimum requirement of an A17 Pro in your iPhone, either M1, M2, or M3 inside your Mac, and M1, M2, M3, or M4 powering your iPad.
Even if you can't take advantage of Apple Intelligence, there's plenty to like about iOS 18, which arrives with new customisation tools for app icons on the iPhone.
The next update to Apple Watch offers new ways to track training loads and fresh clockfaces. macOS Sequoia introduces the ability to directly mirror your iPhone on a Mac, bringing the ability to interact with all of your iOS apps on the desktop operating system for the first time.
