Sep 10, 2024 - Technology
Which Apple AI features are coming when (and where)
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Apple's generative AI features are coming in waves, with some arriving in October, others later this year and another set due sometime before the middle of next year.
Why it matters: Those considering buying an iPhone 16 for the AI features will want to be clear-eyed about Apple's timeline, which also varies by region and language.
Here's Apple's timeline, as clarified at Monday's iPhone launch event:
What's coming with iOS 18.1 in October
- A series of writing tools to allow people to rewrite, proofread or summarize text within a variety of applications, including Mail, Notes and Pages.
- In Photos, users will be able to erase unwanted parts of a photo using a new "Clean Up" tool and to search their collection by describing the characteristics of a photo, including where it was taken, who is in the image and other criteria. The expanded search feature also lets people find specific moments within video clips.
- In both the Notes and Phone apps, users will be able to record, transcribe and summarize audio.
- The Mail app gets several AI-generated features, including priority messages, smart reply and email summaries.
- Some relatively modest enhancements are coming to Siri as part of the first wave of Apple Intelligence: The voice assistant should be able to make sense of requests even when users stumble over their words or interrupt it. It will also have enhanced expertise in the ins and outs of Apple's own products and can maintain context from one request to another.
- All of these features (which are the same ones Apple has been testing with developers) will be made available in American English only and will still carry a "beta" tag when they are launched, with Apple looking to make improvements based on user feedback.
What's coming before the end of the year
- Image Playground, the company's text-to-image generator that creates playful, cartoonish art based on a user's prompt.
- Genmoji, which allows people to use a text description to create custom emoji.
- An expansion of Apple Intelligence to other flavors of English — including what's spoken in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the U.K.
- Apple's integration with ChatGPT, in which people can request their more complicated questions be answered by OpenAI's chatbot, is also due to be available before the end of 2024. ChatGPT can also help compose text within Apple's writing tools.
What's coming in the first half of 2025
- Broader Siri improvements, such as the ability to ask the assistant to surface information from various Apple and third-party applications and to make use of information on the device screen.
- Siri will also be able to take hundreds of actions within various apps for developers who use the new "App Intents" feature.
- Additional language support, including Chinese, French, Japanese and Spanish.
Zoom in: It's also not just a question of when Apple Intelligence features will arrive, but where.
- Apple is only committing to supporting English this year, but announced plans to bring Apple Intelligence to additional languages (and presumably regions) next year.
- Apple has said it won't be bringing the features to iPhones and iPads in the European Union due to what it says is regulatory uncertainty over the region's new Digital Markets Act, including a slew of interoperability requirements.
- The company is bringing Apple Intelligence to Macs in the EU — they're a product segment in which Apple doesn't have the same obligation under the DMA.
- The iPhone maker also wants to bring the features to China as soon as it can, though it faces a series of regulatory hurdles it will have to first overcome there.
