Here are the 5 Apple Intelligence features I’m most excited for

Apple Intelligence is coming. It’s not coming terribly quickly, and it won’t arrive all at once, but soon enough, compatible iPhones will get an infusion of AI capabilities. Some of those features will look similar to the ones we’ve seen launched by Google and Samsung, too, which is reason enough for iOS fans to get excited. Knowing Apple, it won’t release Apple Intelligence to its entire audience until it’s truly ready, but here are the features I’m excited to try when that day comes.

Up first, everyone’s favorite Apple-only smart assistant, Siri. I’ve lumped a few different Apple Intelligence upgrades into this category because there’s so much coming to Siri that it would be an understatement to simply declare that the assistant is getting smarter. It is getting smarter and doing so without changing its name, as Google did when it pivoted from Google Assistant to Gemini, but it’s worth breaking that new power into a few smaller segments.

Apple is also changing how Siri appears on your screen, swapping from a glowing orb at the bottom to a rainbow frame around your entire display — maybe it’s not terribly exciting, but it does look cooler. Anyway, here’s why I’m actually excited about Siri for once:

Honestly, I cannot wait for the day when I can type a question to Siri rather than ask it out loud. I’m not above asking my smart assistant dumb questions, but sometimes I’d rather not do it out loud — not because I’m worried about the answers, but rather because I’d prefer not to add more noise to my local coffee shops. Once Apple Intelligence begins to roll out, you’ll be able to double-tap the bottom of your screen, which will open up a Siri-specific keyboard to take in all of your quietest questions.

Of course, typing your questions to Siri might take away a bit of the new, more conversational tone, but it won’t affect the answers that the smart assistant provides. Questions will still be able to reach across apps to pull in personal information and search more consistently.

Another piece of Siri that I expect to give the smart assistant a serious boost is its increased personal context. Like Gemini, it will be able to jump across apps to learn more about you so you can ask a question, and Siri will check texts, emails, and calendar invites to find the correct answer. Yes, it does involve letting Siri go further into your life, but the results will hopefully be worth it.

With Siri’s improved personal context, I’ll happily let the assistant manage cross-app tasks. If I ask it to send a specific email or retouch a photo and it does so correctly, I’ll be thrilled. Right now, those are things that I’d hesitate to delegate to my assistant in case of a screw-up, but I’d happily let them be automated instead.

Moving beyond Siri, Apple’s next few AI features should look more familiar — at least if you’ve used a recent Android phone. For whatever reason, the ability to create images from nothing seems to be a key part of every brand’s AI rollout, and Apple is no different. Sooner or later, it plans to launch not one but two image generation tools, with the Image Playground covering larger creations and Genmoji working to make your emojis feel a little more unique and personal.

Based on what we’ve seen of the Image Playground, I’m excited about Apple’s approach. Whereas Google’s Pixel Studio won’t generate people and Samsung’s Portrait Studio only generates people, the Image Playground looks like you’ll be able to combine people with art styles and type in elements you want to add — kind of like the best of both worlds. It doesn’t appear you’ll need a human subject for your creations, though, which should add more flexibility once we learn what prompts work best with Apple Intelligence.

Apple’s other image generation tool, Genmoji, isn’t quite as exciting to me, but only because I’m not sure how anyone could improve upon the salute emoji. I’m sure some people will love the personalized Emoji Kitchen approach, though, with the ability to turn an image of someone they know into an emoji. I’d anticipate it to work best with human subjects since Apple already has so many object-based emojis, but I’ll be curious if it works well enough to make a cat emoji actually look like my cats.

Another AI-powered tool that seems to come standard across Android and iOS is the ability to take writing out of your hands — or rather, your thumbs. This Apple Intelligence feature will probably feel familiar the fastest if you’ve used Google’s Help Me Write or Samsung’s Writing Assist. As someone who writes for a living, I’m not sure I’ll get a ton of usage from Apple’s new writing tools, but it’ll be nice to have them around should I need them.

After all, it looks like there will be more to Apple’s tools than simply using AI to generate emails or rephrase the tone of a sentence — you should also be able to proofread documents for grammatical errors or create a quick summary of the content. I’d lump Smart Reply in Mail into the new writing tools, too, which can help you respond to questions in an email with a few simple toggles — much easier than typing out complete sentences when they’re not needed.

And finally, I’m glad that Apple is reorganizing its notification setup. Well, maybe not fully reorganizing it, but Apple Intelligence should do a better job of figuring out which notifications are essential — like deliveries and text messages with date and time information — and which ones can wait until later. On top of that, Apple Intelligence will also summarize the most important notifications, making it easier to glance through a few messages when you don’t have time to read a wall of text.

Perhaps best of all, it’s not just one stack of prioritized notifications, either. Sure, you’ll get the top few hits on your lock screen, but you’ll also get smaller stacks of priority emails when you open Mail, and you can make a summary of a phone call by simply tapping the record button. Personally, I dread trying to clean up my inbox — which is why I’m sitting at 8,000 unread emails — but I’d happily let Apple organize a few of the most important points for me.

I’m sure there will be even more Apple Intelligence features launched soon, but these are the ones I’m excited about now. Of course, I also have to remind myself that even though I know these features are coming, I don’t know exactly when they’ll arrive. Some might come as part of iOS 18.2, while others could take until iOS 18.4, which won’t launch until sometime in 2025. And, as much as I don’t want to wait that long, I’m hopeful that Apple will stick the landing, pushing Google and Samsung to raise their AI game even further.