Apple Intelligence was introduced during Apple’s WWDC 2024 conference in Cupertino, California, on June 10, 2024.
Source: Apple Inc.
Apple on Monday launched the first version of Apple Intelligence, a suite of artificial intelligence features that will improve Siri by automatically creating emails, photos, and sorting notifications.
The new program, called Apple Intelligence, was released in the developer beta of iOS 18.1. It is also available in similar versions for iPad and Mac. It is currently only available to registered developers with Apple. The Apple Developer Program costs $99 per year.
Additionally, users will have to sign up for a waitlist within Apple’s Settings app after the update to gain access to the service, which involves sending commands to Apple’s servers for more complex requests.
It’s scheduled to launch to the public later this year, but the version number 18.1 suggests that Apple Intelligence won’t launch alongside the new iPhones, which are expected to launch with iOS 18 in the fall.
Apple Intelligence is a major initiative for Apple. Investors are hoping that the tight integration of AI into Apple’s operating system will spur a wave of upgrades in the coming years, especially since the system will only run on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and later.
““We expect this iPhone cycle to remain strong for longer as the AI feature sets (software and possibly hardware) improve in the 2025 iPhone,” Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan wrote in a note on Monday.
The preview doesn’t include everything in the Apple Intelligence that the company showed off at its annual developers conference in June.
The preview released on Monday includes:
- New Siri Look Makes Your Phone’s Edge Glow
- Other improvements to Siri, such as the ability to understand commands when the speaker stumbles over their words
- Siri can now answer troubleshooting questions about Apple products
- Improve image search and movie creation
- AI-generated summaries of mail, messages, and voicemail transcripts
- Writing Tools, Apple’s text creation service
These features haven’t been released in the AI preview yet, though Apple says they’ll roll out over the next year:
- Image generation
- Generate emojis
- Automatically clean images
- Other improvements to Siri, including its ability to use your personal information, and the ability to take actions within apps
- OpenAI ChatGPT Integration
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