The most anticipated new feature of the iPhone 16 has finally arrived, a month after the phone itself. Apple Intelligence has been Apple’s biggest story of 2024 – with apologies to the Apple Vision Pro headset – and with the arrival of iOS 18.1 you can now access the Apple Intelligence beta and start trying some of the first features.
Also: iOS 18.1 is officially available for iPhone. How to download (and which models support it)
You’ll need to sign up for the Apple Intelligence beta after downloading the iOS 18.1 update to your phone, then go to the Settings app, tap the new “Apple Intelligence & Siri” setting, and request beta access.
Also keep in mind that not all Apple Intelligence features are here yet. I’ll go over what’s in iOS 18.1 and what’s coming later. I’ve been using Apple Intelligence since late July, when it first arrived in developer beta, and I have several favorite features.
I also recently spoke with Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of worldwide product marketing, about launching Apple Intelligence to the general public with the arrival of iOS 18.1. We specifically talked about my two favorite aspects of how Apple implements generative AI:
- Apple Intelligence takes some of the best features of large language models (LLMs) and integrates them directly into apps and features rather than relying solely on a chatbot prompt.
- Strong security and privacy controls are fully built in from the start.
Borchers said: “We’re introducing features that will integrate into your daily life and workflow to make it easier, faster, better and more personal – and without ever compromising your privacy. »
Also: 6 iOS 18 Settings I Changed Right Away – and Why You Should Too
Apple isn’t just relying on the work of OpenAI and other AI companies. It carries out its own research and development to offer new features. “We’ve built the large-scale delivery and language models here at Apple that are at the heart of Apple intelligence,” Borchers said, “and we’ve specialized them for specific tasks.”
My 5 Favorite Apple Intelligence Features in iOS 18.1
Only some of the features Apple announced this summer when it unveiled Apple Intelligence are available in iOS 18.1 (as well as iPadOS 18.1 and MacOS Sequoia 15.1). These are my favorite features.
1. Siri lights up — The fact that Siri has a completely new look and feel, with a multi-colored glow around the edges of the screen when you activate it, is an indication that it can do so much more. One of my favorite things is actually one of the most subtle. It’s packed with lots of tips and information to help you understand how to do things on your iPhone, like how to AirDrop a file and how to share a Wi-Fi password.
2. Writing tools correct your messages – Apple’s AI helper app to correct your grammar, spelling and style is easily accessible from Mail, Notes and can even be viewed by third-party apps.
3. Notification summaries save time and scrolling — Rather than having to wade through a long group chat thread, the system can summarize the decision on where to meet for dinner or notify you of the most important information among all the notifications you missed while you were off the grid.
4. Record phone calls and summarize them — You can now record phone calls directly from the Phone app, and the summary feature can give you a quick paragraph explaining the most important points. The summary is still a work in progress.
5. Take audio in Notes and summarize — When you use the Notes app to make an audio recording (the recording function is buried under the paperclip), the system can now summarize for you. Much like the phone call summary, the quality of Apple’s summary is still a work in progress, but it’s useful to have.
What’s not yet in Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.1
- ChatGPT Integration — If Siri doesn’t know certain information, it might be able to query ChatGPT to do some of the things it’s good at.
- Picture Playground — This is where you can generate your own images based on a description you enter.
- Genmoji — You will be able to create your own personalized emojis to respond to text messages.
- Personal background — This is the example where you can simply ask Siri what time your mother’s flight is arriving and it will know who your mother is and can look up the flight information based on an email or a Recent text message.
- Non-English languages — Additional English variants (non-US) will arrive later in 2024 and other languages (Chinese, French, Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Vietnamese) will arrive in 2025.
More to come
Borchers called the launch the start of “an ongoing cadence of Apple intelligence releases that we hope will continue for some time.”