Visual Intelligence has proven to be one of Apple Intelligence's better additions, turning your iPhone's camera lens into a search tool. And in iOS 26, the feature gains new capabilities that promise to make Visual Intelligence even more useful.
It's tempting to dismiss Visual Intelligence as Apple's Google Lens knock-off, but that undersells what the AI-powered capability brings to the table. In the current iteration, you can use the Camera Control button on iPhone 16 models or a Control Center shortcut on the iPhone 15 Pro to launch the camera and snap a photo of whatever has caught your interest. From there, you can run an online search of an image, get more information via Apple Intelligence's ChatGPT tie-in, or even create a calendar entry when you photograph something with dates and times.
