At the WWDC 2024, Apple has proved there is more to AI than writing or processing voice commands. The company has shared various amazing things your iPhone can do with Apple Intelligence on iOS 18. Some of these capabilities, like summarizing and prioritizing emails, are things I didn’t give much thought about before. But now I can’t wait to have such features on my devices.
iOS 18 is still not available to consumers at the moment. Apple has only released a developer beta, while a public beta will be available sometime next month.
We can expect the full suite of iOS 18 later in September, alongside the launch of new iPhones. However, according to Apple, Apple Intelligence will still be in beta at the time.
Beta or not, Apple Intelligence is a total game changer in how we interact with our iPhones. Of course, this artificial intelligence will also be available on iPads with iPadOS 18 and Mac on M1 chip or better. But I’m usually more with my iPhone (and watch) than these other Apple devices.
Key Takeaway: 6 Top Things Your iPhone Can Do With Apple Intelligence
- Your iPhone with Apple Intelligence can rewrite and proofread the written message
- An iPhone with Apple Intelligence can fulfill Siri requests with on-screen awareness
- Your iPhone with Apple Intelligence can summarize emails and prioritize urgent one
- An iPhone with Apple Intelligence can create personalized emojis and playful images
- Your iPhone with Apple Intelligence can search and pull up specific images in Seconds
- An iPhone with Apple Intelligence helps you edit photos fast and without accidental altering
What is Apple Intelligence on iOS 18 & How Safe Is Your Data
The keystone of Apple Intelligence is to have an AI that understands you (as the user). Apple has developed this intelligence with a powerful generative model that uses your personal context to only provide what’s helpful and relevant.
The new AI is bound to the core of iOS 18 to interact with the apps you use on your iPhone every day. For instance, it can interact with your file manager to pull up a document, photos, or videos of/ from someone specific.
Based on the “personal context” of its users, Apple introduces Apple’s intelligence as “personal intelligence” that understands you and your needs. All this can help make sure you don’t miss any priority events – be it a meeting, school pickup, or dinner date.
However, to accomplish all these tasks, Apple Intelligence will have to communicate with the apps on your iOS 18 device. This is something some may feel like an invasion of privacy on a personal level. But Apple says they have built the AI with your privacy in mind, featuring a unique hardware and software integration for on-device processing.
In simple words, Apple Intelligence can communicate with your apps on a compatible iPhone to achieve the desired task. However, the device Intelligence won’t be collecting your data from any of these apps.
Apple Intelligence has been able to maintain this level of privacy as many of its generative models rely on an on-device semantic index. If you make a complex request that is not in the on-device computation, Apple Intelligence extends its search to the company’s Private Cloud compute.
Private Cloud Compute (PCC) is a new, state-of-the-art security architecture that Apple has developed for its cloud AI. PCC is indeed “private” and only uses the provided data to fulfill the personal intelligence requests of iPhone users. Not even Apple employees can access your data or save it in any form.
Like with the iPhone on-device privacy, Apple promises independent experts can verify the privacy promise of Private Cloud Compute. But again, the Apple AI cloud will be only available in beta. So, the tech giant is still yet to release all the technical details about it (PCC).
A Dozen Things Your iPhone Can Do with Apple Intelligence on iOS 18
After the brief introduction, I’ll now break down about twelve unique things you can enjoy with Apple intelligence on iOS 18. The various capabilities are:
[1] Express Yourself with Genmoji
I usually enjoy texting my friends with emojis, and Apple has just made it easy to find the right one.
In any of the iPhones with Apple Intelligence, you can use Genmoji (as Apple calls it), to ensure you express your moment with the right emoji.
Genmoji brings you the right emoji by simply typing your description on the device keyboard. The emoji you describe will appear on the screen within seconds and in various variations to consider.
More fun, you can use your iPhone with Apple Intelligence to create a unique Genmoji using a photo from your library.
[2] Funtime with Image Playground
Instead of Genmojis/ emojis, you can use your iPhone with Apple intelligence to create unique, playful images in chats. The feature lets you create a perfect image using the exact costume, accessory, place, and theme of your moment.
Like with emojis, you can draw the image playground you want by simply typing a description on your iPhone messaging app. The feature will even have an option to use a picture from your saved contact list. And for this picture, you can style it up as an animation, sketch, or illustration that best suits the vibe of your conversation.
[3] Interact with Siri Naturally
Siri is one of the best (if not the best) intelligent assistants that helps you perform tasks easily using simple voice commands. And thanks to the incredible power of the new Apple AI, Siri can now understand your requests more naturally.
According to Kelsey, Apple’s director of machine learning and AI, the new Siri can understand voice requests even when you stumble over your words. The digital assistant will also be able to follow along and maintain conversational contexts from the last request.
With the rich language-understanding capabilities of Apple Intelligence, you can also type to Siri to execute a certain request. Thus, ensuring you still can watch a security camera feed, set an alarm, and others without having to say the words. It is all easy to switch between voice and text Siri by double-tapping at the bottom of your iPhone screen.
[4] Draw Your iPhone Settings Instantly
The new Siri has extensive knowledge of all the iPhones with Apple Intelligence on iOS 18. As such, you can ask it questions about a certain setting or feature of your phone, and it will answer them within seconds.
To make it better, you can describe the feature/ setting if you don’t know its exact name and Siri will understand. It will bring out this feature/ setting on the screen of the device, with all the relevant directions to follow.
Furthermore, Apple intelligence has facilitated on-screen awareness with Siri, whereby it can fulfill commands with the things on the screen. A good example here is when you ask Siri to add a physical address to the contact card of the person you’re chatting with.
[5] Pull Up Documents & Photos in Seconds
Siri can communicate with other apps on your iPhone with iOS 18 to complete tasks on your behalf. If it’s about a meeting you were prepping on, you can ask Siri to share the summary notes with a teammate via email. The virtual assistant can also crawl through your library of hundreds of photos to bring out specific selections you describe.
Remember the personal context I mentioned earlier? Siri, thanks to Apple intelligence and its on-device semantic index of things like files/ photos/ calendar events/ messages, can help you find important information in ways it never did.
Be it an email from a co-worker about a rescheduled meeting or a picture of your driving license, Siri can pull it in seconds. No need to waste 5 or 10 minutes jumping from one folder to another, or one messaging app to another.
Earlier on, I mentioned the powerful privacy protection around Apple Intelligence. So, you never have to worry about your data leaking to third parties or even Apple staff.
[6] Write like a Pro with your iPhone
Do you write a lot? Apple Intelligence is set on simplifying and enhancing your writing on iPhone models that support iOS 18. You can use the new AI to craft the perfect words for your traveling blog, lecture notes, or business email.
Apple Intelligence will be available across the system-wide Writing Tools. So, you can now communicate more effectively and concisely.
For example, you can use Apple Intelligence in your draft email to “rewrite” the message into a more professional or friendly tone. It also has the option to proofread your written message to correct the grammar, word choice, and sentence construction. Thus, you won’t need to transfer your written document to Grammarly anymore.
[7] Prioritize & Summarize Your Emails
The other thing your iPhone can do with Apple Intelligence on iOS18 is to summarize the message in your emails. Instead of a preview of the first line of the message, the emails on your iPhone will now show a summary line of the key details.
So, from your email list, you’ll know Gina got feedback from your business associate and where they’ll be meeting. Then, you can prioritize reading it if that meeting is crucial and would like to know more – like the meeting time.
Speaking of priority, Apple Intelligence can use its personal-context capabilities to determine your most urgent emails in the inbox. Then, it prioritizes all those urgent emails on top of the rest.
Besides the emails, your iOS 18 iPhone can use Apple Intelligence to prioritize urgent notifications on the stack. All the notifications will also have a summary of the message on the first line. Hence, again, you can know which notifications to click on first, and which are less important.
[8] Illustrative Notes with Image Wand
Image Wand is another new feature on iPhones with Apple Intelligence that you can use to enhance illustrations on your notes app. The feature utilizes the imaging capabilities of this artificial intelligence to make stunning images from your rough sketches. Thus, ensuring your notes are more visual and engaging.
The AI even makes it possible to create an image to go with your notes right from scratch. All you need is to circle an empty system on your notes, and then the on-device intelligence will handle everything else in seconds.
[9] Record or Transcribe Audio Notes & Phone Calls
Apart from the visual illustrations, Apple Intelligence has made it possible to record audio in your Notes app. The artificial intelligence will then create a written summary that outlines the key points of your audio recording.
It’s worth mentioning that both the audio recording and transcription will be available on the phone app as well. Thus, helping capture some vital details of a phone call you may need to refer to in the future.
[10] A Memory Movie of Your Best Moments
More on that, Apple Intelligence has made it easy to create a memory movie with photos from your library. If it’s a specific memory movie, you just type in a description of the particular moments you seek. Then, the AI will use its deep language and image understanding to create a movie from the best images.
As I mentioned earlier, you can now pull up specific images from your iPhone on iOS 18 within seconds. The same applies to videos, whereby you only type in a short description of the moment you’re looking for.
[11] Edit Your iPhone Photos with Precision
Yet another thing your iPhone with Apple Intelligence can do is edit photos fast, efficiently, and faultlessly.
Like with the new Clean Up tool for your photos, it’s not only easy to remove unwanted objects in the background. Apple Intelligence will clean that photo for you without altering the main subject of the shot.
[12] Explore the Broader Knowledge of ChatGPT
At this point, we can agree Apple’s artificial intelligence aims to help improve how we perform everyday tasks on our iPhones. Yes, Apple Intelligence is still available on iPadiOS 18 and Mac M1 or later. But more people use iPhones than iPads or Macs – I’m a perfect example.
In any case, all these devices with Apple Intelligence will also have other AI tools that focus on specialized domain expertise. One of these external models of artificial intelligence that will be available on Apple is ChatGPT by OpenAI.
The first integration of ChatGPT within iOS 18 is on Siri, which can help provide answers from its extensive world knowledge. ChatGPT is also available on the various Writing Tools on your iPhone. The chatbot will prepare content for whatever topic/ subject you want to write about, plus even generate an illustrative image.
Your iPhone with iOS 18 will be able to tap into the broad capabilities of ChatGPT without having to create an account. The feature will also be free to use, just like Apple Intelligence.
However, ChatGPT has a premium subscription where users can do more on its platform. As a paying member of this chatbot AI, you can connect your account to access the premium features on your iOS iPhone.
Should I Get an iPhone with Apple Intelligence on iOS 18?
The entire suite of fresh features with Apple Intelligence on iOS 18 is something any real fan of iPhone will grapple over. Like that “summary and prioritizing important emails” is a feature I need to never miss an important message, even with my busy schedule.
Second, all my friends know I deeply love emojis on chats. And now with Genmoji, it’s easy to find the perfect emojis to embed in a chat, plus I have the option to personalize them.
A powerful Siri also eases the ways I use my phone. One of the applications I’ll likely use this AI feature is to surface a document from thousands of files or emails.
The integration of ChatGPT to the Apple platforms with the new artificial intelligence is also something that can be helpful to a lot of people. However, some Apple users have concerns over having the chatbot integrated into their iOS 18 system.
The concerns over ChatGPT trace back to privacy issues OpenAI has had in the past. However, Apple continues to ensure that using an iPhone with Apple Intelligence has the utmost privacy protection.
Apple says most of the AI computation is one-device processing, while the little sophisticated requests utilize the new Private Cloud Compute servers.
Additionally, your iPhone will always push an authorization request before accessing results from ChatGPT. Apple also insists the IP address will be obscured when one accesses ChatGPT, and that OpenAI won’t store your data.
