The wait is finally over! After months of anticipation, Apple Intelligence is finally making it to the masses via the latest iOS update (iOS 18.1). While iPhone users are still going to have to wait several more months to experience it fully, Apple dropped a handful of features today that iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro users can enjoy. What did the company launch? Well, let’s find out!
As a quick note, Apple Intelligence is only coming to the abovementioned models. If you’re using a base iPhone 15, you won’t be getting Apple Intelligence. So, if you want to use it, then you’ll need to upgrade. Thankfully, the base iPhone 16 will gather all of the features.
Another thing to note is that many Apple Intelligence features won’t land with this update. Apple is blessing iPhone users with some of the announced features, but many of the more exciting features won’t be landing until a few months before the iPhone 17 launches.
What’s coming with the iOS 18.1 update?
The features that Apple launches today aren’t much different from what we’ve been seeing with many other AI tools over the past few years. So, some of these features will give you a feeling of déjà vu.
Let’s start with the writing tools
Some of the oldest and most basic AI tools help you write text. There’s the summarizing tool, which is basically Gen-AI 101. With this tool, you can have the AI summarize large blocks of text to make them easier to read. As with other AI tools, you can have it format the text however you want and tell it how elaborate or succinct you want it to be.
You can also have it fix up your writing for you. Say you need to write a text message to someone. Well, you can feed your draft into the AI and have it generate a different version of the text with whatever tone you want. You can have it make the message more interesting, professional, brief, emotional, etc.
Notification features
Here’s one feature that you don’t see with other platforms. Apple Intelligence will use AI to read through your notifications and pick out the ones that are the most important. It will then surface those notifications while filtering out unimportant alerts.
Next up, Apple Intelligence will automatically summarize your notifications for you. If you receive a lengthy email or text message from a co-worker about a meeting, you’ll see a summary of it before you even open the associated app.
Photos
Moving on to some non-text-related features, Apple Intelligence will use AI to create Memories in the Photos app. You also have the ability to make your own Memories.
Next, here’s a feature that’s been around since before the whole Gen-AI boom. There’s a new Photo Clean-up tool that you can use to erase unwanted objects in your pictures. This, of course, will remind us all of Magic Eraser.
Calling
Apple Intelligence will transcribe your phone calls so you have a copy of the conversation in text form. Not only that, but it will also summarize those transcripts.
That’s all folks!
If you were expecting a little more pizzazz, then you’re going to be disappointed. Apple promised us the world with its Apple Intelligence announcement, but we’re just going to have to settle for a world map for the moment. Other features like context awareness, deep ChatGPT integration, and other features straight out of The Jetsons won’t come until well into 2025.
