Apple Intelligence will be released later this month, on October 28, notable Apple leaker Mark Gurman has claimed.
What may be the iPhone 16 family’s most important feature, Apple Intelligence won’t arrive until more than a month after the phones’ release date, according to Bloomberg, in order to ensure its features are ready for prime time.
Apple Intelligence AI will come to iPhones as part of an iOS 18.1 software update. However, this will not include all the features that will eventually make up Apple Intelligence.
It’s an effort to “ensure that major bugs are eliminated” according to Bloomberg’s Gurman, and to prepare Apple servers for the load.
While Apple bigged up that some of its Apple Intelligence features will work on-device, more advanced ones will offload processing work to Apple’s servers and its computers in the cloud.
Don’t expect one of the most eye-catching features to arrive this month either. Genmoji, which are AI-derived emojis, aren’t coming until iOS 18.2. Other core features won’t come until an even later date.
Apple is playing the roll-out of its AI offering carefully. Arch-rival Microsoft entered with more aggression, after it announced its CoPilot+ features and laptops in May 2024. But it ended up delaying the key one, the history-trawling Recall, for months following controversy surrounding its privacy and security implications.
What features will Apple Intelligence include?
The initial version of Apple Intelligence will mostly comprise AI-spruced versions of features already in iOS.
For example, in Photos you can currently search for photo types by asking for a keyword like “sunset”, but Apple Intelligence will upgrade this using “natural language” processing. You’ll be able to get more specific and, with any luck, see good results.
A Priority Notifications display will show just the most important stuff from your received notifications on your lock screen, potentially reducing the number of times you need to unlock your iPhone.
Also expected relatively early on are Apple Intelligence features in the Notes and Phone apps, which will be used to summarise calls and notes. Such summaries are a common use of generative AI.
Looking into the future, Apple Intelligence’s Image Wand will turn a doodle into a generated image. This is similar to the AI feature crowbar into Microsoft Paint.
The fully AI turbo-charged version of Siri is one for the future too. It will let the assistant mine the context of the request, and what it knows about you, to provide a more useful answer — and become more like the disembodied voice assistants of dystopian sci-fi movies.
According to Bloomberg’s Gurman, this part of Apple Intelligence won’t be around until March 2025, with the iOS 18.4 software update.
