Apple Intelligence explained: Key features arriving on iPhone 16 and other Apple devices
Finally, after launching the iPhone 16 lineup in September, Apple has started to roll out the first batch of Apple Intelligence features, which are one of the main selling points for the company's latest flagship series.
The iPhone 16 and iOS 18 represent Apple's attempt to catch up on AI integration, offering several key features that enhance user experience and productivity. All Apple Intelligence features are free.
One of the most notable advancements is the ability to interact with Siri more naturally, but there is more.
Beyond Siri, Apple Intelligence is seamlessly integrated into various apps. The Messages and Mail apps now leverage AI to suggest appropriate responses, summarize lengthy threads, and compose emails in different tones. The Photos app benefits from AI-powered features like object removal and enhanced search capabilities.
All iPhone 16 models will also have a Google Lens-like feature called Visual Intelligence, which is designed to make it easier for users to learn about the world around them by just pointing the camera at any given thing.
For web browsing, the iPhone 16 introduces Intelligent Search, which analyzes web pages to highlight key points and provide summaries. The Web Eraser tool further streamlines the browsing experience by allowing users to remove unwanted elements from websites.
Apple will be releasing Apple Intelligence features spread throughout different iOS 18 software updates. This process is said to reach April 2025. The latest update featuring new Apple AI features is 18.1.
Remember that to use Apple Intelligence, you'll need an iPhone 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max, or any iPhone 16 model set to US English. Join the waitlist in Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri. Once activated, your device will download the available AI features.
Apple Intelligence features already available:
- Messages, Mail, and Notes writing tools
- Mail app gets Smart Categorization, Digest View, Smart Reply, Email Summaries
- Safari improves: page summaries and removal of unwanted ads
- Voice transcription for the Phone and Notes apps
- Enhanced Photos app with smarter search and an object removal tool
- Siri becomes smarter and contextually aware
- Visual Intelligence (works like Google Lens)
- Image Playground lets you generate images
- Genmoji lets you create unique emojis
- ChatGPT integration
All iPhone 16 Apple Intelligence features in chronological order
October 28: iOS 18.1
Writing and summary tools
Apple Intelligence—like many other AI models—changes the way you write by being your personal editor. You can use it to have an email written in a different tone (friendly, professional, concise), or to proofread the text. It is also capable of summarizing, placing key points or a list, and even inserting a table.
- Proofreading — Apple Intelligence has powerful proofreading capabilities, although they are not perfect. If haven't written enough text, you get a pop-up message saying that the feature might not work properly for shorter selections. If the message is long enough, however, proofreading via Apple Intelligence does a good job at correcting and polishing your text.
- Rewrite — The Rewrite feature comes in handy when you want help with restructuring your text so that it changes its tone. There are three presets: Professional, Friendly, and Concise. You can also give specific instructions about what you want to changed. Sometimes the rewritten version will be perfect and you won't need to alter what the AI has given you, but usually you want to step in and tweak a thing or two. The benefit here is that the AI has done most of the job for you.
- Text summary, Key Points, List and Table — You can have long messages and emails summarized. This even works with email threads, helping you catch up quickly on the most important parts. In fact, you can summarize any written text.
- Notification summary — This is probably the feature that users will feel the benefit of the most. It helps you get a concise and direct summary of your notifications, eliminating the need to tap on each one. The feature works with all apps, both first and third-party ones. What makes it even nicer is that you can decide for which apps to enable it.
Reduce Interruptions
iOS 18.1 introduces a new Focus mode called “Reduce Interruptions,” powered by Apple’s AI. This intelligent feature prioritizes urgent notifications, such as an important calendar event or a message that required your immediate attention, while silencing less critical ones.
It feels a lot like the Scheduled Summary feature for Notifications, but it couple of steps further by sifting through the low-priority information to give you only what you should really pay attention to.
Like other Focus modes, Reduce Interruptions lets you customize which apps and contacts can always reach you. You can easily manage these settings in the Settings app.
It feels a lot like the Scheduled Summary feature for Notifications, but it couple of steps further by sifting through the low-priority information to give you only what you should really pay attention to.
Like other Focus modes, Reduce Interruptions lets you customize which apps and contacts can always reach you. You can easily manage these settings in the Settings app.
Mail app improvements
The Mail app has been given a much-needed overhaul via Apple Intelligence. Here are the new features it comes with:
- Smart Categorization: Emails are automatically sorted into Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. The AI will also determine which emails are of higher priority and bring them at the top in a dedicated section.
- Digest View: Groups emails by sender for easy reference. This feature is especially helpful if you have a long ongoing thread of emails with someone specific.
- Smart Reply: AI-powered response suggestions. The feature is rather bare bones and only offers very quick and short replies, which tend to be unhelpful, so you will probably still rely on manual replies.
- Email Summaries: Quickly understand email content without opening.
Voice transcription
Users now have the ability to record, transcribe, and summarize audio from the Phone and Notes apps. This feature helps you get a rough idea of the information the recording covers, which is a much quicker way to access it than having to listen to it.
Enhanced Photos app
- Clean Up — Much like with Google's Magic Eraser tool, Apple has added a way for users to remove unwanted objects from photos. In fact, the tool appears to be even better, as it is aware of other parts of the image.
For example, if you want to remove a person that is partially behind someone else, the phone is aware of who/what you want to keep and does not let you accidentally cut them away as you mark the object you want removed.
The new Clean Up tool can be used on photos you have taken prior to the iOS 18.1 update.
- Advanced search — Searching through photos and videos is now more intuitive as the app can understand more complex queries. You can describe what the image contains by typing in the search bar and the phone will give you whatever photos and videos match your description. In our experience, however, it the feature takes your input quite literally, excluding anything that doesn't exactly match what you have written.
- Creating memory movies — Users can also create a memory by simply typing a description, with Apple Intelligence transforming their photos and videos into a movie. iPhones were already capable of creating such movies, but the new part here is that you can now give specific directions and guide the automated process.
Some Siri improvements
Siri's new look with glowing sides and corners. | Image by PhoneArena
- A new look — Siri now has a new look when it is activated, with a soft colorful glow appearing at the corners of your screen instead of the bubble we are used to.
- Natural conversations — With iOS 18.1 and the introduction of Apple Intelligence, Siri is more capable of handling conversations more naturally. This means you can ask Siri questions without worrying if it understands you when you stumble over words as you talk. It also means that you no longer have to be that careful about your wording and pronunciation. Even if you change your mind mid-sentence, the assistant adapts to the changes.
You can even ask follow-up questions or give follow-up commands to Siri. This was somewhat possible before, but now Siri understands and acts upon more complex inputs. For example, you can ask Siri "What will the weather be like at Half Dome Yosemite tomorrow?" and then ask Siri to create a hike event there for that day.
- Apple product guides and instructions — Siri is now also capable of giving you step-by-step instructions on any problem you need a solution to that is related to an Apple product. The feature directly draws from Apple's own website, so you might not get the best answer if your question or problem are very niche. Also, you receive the information in plain text, with not visual instructions, so you might still have to do additional research if your situation requires it.
Important notice: These features, which have been undergoing testing with developers, will initially be available in American English only and will be marked as 'beta' upon release. Apple plans to gather user feedback to refine and improve these features before a full, stable launch.
December: iOS 18.2
Genmoji: Endless emoji possibilities
Apple is giving users the ability to create their own emojis with the new feature creatively dubbed "Genmoji." These generated emojis are created via prompts in the form of text, and they have the exact same style as that of regular Apple emojis.
Image Playground: Generative images
A new Image Playground app, which appears rather limited compared to the alternatives such as Microsoft's DALL-E, is available for users to create custom images with the help of Apple Intelligence and possibly ChatGPT. This feature likely functions like the popular Midjourney app.
Safari 18
Apple's Safari browser is getting some helpful updates to make browsing easier. A new feature called Intelligent Search uses artificial intelligence to analyze web pages and highlight key points or phrases. It can also provide a summary of the content, saving you time spent reading through long articles.
More exciting is the new Web Eraser tool that lets you remove unwanted elements from websites, like ads or distracting sections. Once removed, these elements stay hidden for future visits, creating a cleaner browsing experience.
ChatGPT integration
ChatGPT will come in play whenever Siri Siri can't answer a question you have. Instead of going to Google and giving you a bunch of search results, the iPhone will ask if you are okay with using ChatGPT for that particular instance. If you tap "Yes" ChatGPT will give you its own answer.
More variants of the English language
The new AI features that have come out up to this point are also expected to get support for other English dialects: such as U.K., New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and South Africa.
iOS 18.3: March or April
More and bigger Siri improvements
- Contextual Awareness and Proactive Assistance
For instance, if you ask Siri, "When is mom's flight landing?" it will search contacts and messages to give you the flight details. You can even follow-up with a question about any plans you made with that person like "What's our dinner plan?" and Siri will draw out the exact message that has the information you need.
- Text-Based Interactions
Visual Intelligence
Apple announced one new AI-powered feature during the iPhone 16 event that was not mentioned at WWDC earlier this year, and that was Visual Intelligence. Essentially, it allows users to "instantly learn about everything they see" by using their iPhone's camera.
Here's how it works:
- Capacitive Camera Button: To activate Visual Intelligence, users will need to hold down the new capacitive camera button located on the side of the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro.
- Point and Shoot: Once the button is held down, users can point their phone's camera at any object or scene they're curious about.
- Instant Information: Using a combination of on-device intelligence and Apple's cloud-based services, the iPhone will analyze the image and provide relevant information.
Some example use cases include taking a picture of a restaurant to get its hours, location, and reviews; pointing your camera at a flyer or document to extract key information like title, date, and location; searching Google for a specific item you see, or getting help with a concept from your study notes; checking an pet's breed.
Visual Intelligence is available on all iPhone 16 models and can quickly be activated via the new Camera Control key that sides on the lower right side of the frame.
More language support
This is also when Apple is expected to add support for other languages, including Chinese, French, Spanish and Japanese.
Our thoughts so far
Apple Intelligence and the new AI features available with the iPhone 16 series are shaping up to have a major influence on the overall iOS experience. Many of the features mentioned above are already available on other phones, though... It's also not a good look considering that iPhone 16 owners won't get the full Apple Intelligence suite until later next year.
So, needless to say, Apple Intelligence feels somewhat underbaked and a bit lackluster. We think it will have a much more finalized look in the second half of next year, when all of the features will be available.
But one of the best things about Apple Intelligence is that it focuses on safety first, much like with the rest of Apple's software. It is designed with a strong emphasis on privacy and security. Apple has implemented innovative technologies like Private Cloud Compute (PCC) to minimize data exposure and maximize user control.nPCC involves a highly secure, custom cloud infrastructure that limits data access and enforces strict security measures. While no system is completely foolproof, Apple's approach to AI and privacy appears to be a significant step forward.
Of course, if you are still worried about your privacy or you don't want anything related to Apple Intelligence turned on, you can always disable it by going to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri > Toggling off the switch next to "Apple Intelligence."
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