Apple Intelligence: A Work in Progress with Promising Updates in iOS 18.4

iOS 18.3 proves Apple Intelligence is far from finished

in the greater scheme of things, iOS 18.3 will go down as a relatively uneventful update, mostly introducing fixes and refinements to existing features as opposed to rolling out new capabilities to your iPhone. But if you're following the introduction of Apple Intelligence, iOS 18.3 took a pretty big step forward in the evolution of Apple's suite of AI-powered tools When Apple Intelligence debuted with the iOS 18.1 update back in October, owners of supported iPhones needed to opt in to the new set of features by heading into settings and toggling on a switch. That's not the case anymore -- starting with iOs 18.3, Apple Intelligence features will be turned on by default. On the surface, one might look at this development as Apple dusting off its hands and declaring "Mission Accomplished." It is anything but -- even after iOS 18.3, Apple Intelligence remains a work in progress. While some of the AI features have integrated themselves quite nicely into the iPhone experience, others need more polish, and some promised improvements have yet to launch -- something Apple itself would readily acknowledge. While iOS 18.3 enabling Apple Intelligence by default grabs everyone's attention, there are other signs within the software update that indicate a lot of work is ahead of Apple on the AI front. For starters, you can still turn off Apple Intelligence from the Apple Intelligence & Siri section of the Settings app, so opting in isn't mandatory. For another thing, a lot of the fixes in iOS 18.3 I mentioned at the start of this article have to do with fine-tuning Apple Intelligence. One of the more noteworthy aspects of the update involves notifications for news and entertainment apps. Apple has temporarily turned these off because many of the AI-powered summaries proved to be wildly inaccurate. That's not ideal for the makers of news apps watching their articles mischaracterized by Apple's AI nor does it generate a lot of confidence in the other summary tools included in Apple Intelligence. Apple's wisely taking that feature back to the drawing board, but it's an indicator of how some artificial intelligence needs better training before it's ready to go out into the wild. On a more positive note, iOS 18.3 also contains updates to existing AI features that make them better. Other AI-generated summaries that appear on your lock screen -- like for text messages, just as an example -- will now appear in italicized text, making them easier to spot at a glance. If you've got an iPhone 16 model, the Visual Intelligence feature can now add events to the Calendar app when you point your camera at a flyer or poster; the feature also can identify plants and animals. These are positive improvements, not unlike the addition of the Describe Your Change feature to Writing Tools in last year's iOS 18.2 update. Describe Your Change provides a lot better control over the way in which Apple's AI feature tweaks your text, adding some muscle to what had been some pretty flaccid writing tools. That's the positive aspect of treating Apple Intelligence as an ongoing rollout. Apple may introduce new AI features, but it's not done with them once they land on your phone. There's a willingness to go back and fix what's not working or expand on what is. The biggest missing piece in the Apple Intelligence rollout remains Siri. Apple's personal assistant has seen some improvements in the initial updates to iOS 18. but the most anticipated improvement is still to come. Specifically, conversations with Siri have become a little more natural since Apple Intelligence launched with the digital assistant able to field follow-up questions while understanding the context of what you're asking about. Sometimes, that's with mixed levels of success, but you can see where Apple is making improvements. There are other changes to Siri, like a new animation that flashes across the entire iPhone screen to indicate the assistant is all ears, and there's a Type to Siri feature as well. You can also interrupt the assistant when it's rattling back an answer to you if you want to ask follow-up questions, and Siri isn't flummoxed when you correct yourself mid-request. Certainly, these are welcome improvements, but Apple has promised more. To that end, Siri is supposed to pick up on-screen awareness, so that it can make suggestions and provide answers based on what's displayed on your iPhone screen. Siri is also supposed to learn your personal context, so that its recommendations are better tailored to you. And finally, Siri should be able to interact with other apps on your phone as well. The good news is these changes are rumored to be arriving in the iOS 18.4 update later this spring, which means those of us with the public beta of iOS 18 installed should soon be able to try them out. But on the downside, the absence of these features has been keenly felt ever since the Galaxy S25 launch delivered new Galaxy AI capabilities that have beaten Apple to the punch. For instance, you can tap into the Gemini assistant on a Galaxy S25 and perform cross-app actions with any app from Google or Samsung, plus Whatsapp and Spotify. Thanks to that improvement, you can even give a command that interacts with multiple apps at once, looking up information online and adding it to a note as an example. Additionally, the new One UI 7 software running on the Galaxy S25 features a Now Brief screen that's eventually going to be populated with personalized information and contextually appropriate data like upcoming appointments, traffic conditions for your daily commute and other information based on your past activities and preferences. In early testing, the Now Brief screen looks pretty bare bones, but it figures to get smarter over time as it learns more about you. It doesn't necessarily matter that Samsung got to these features ahead of Apple. But it very much raises the bar that Apple has to implement them better than Samsung has. And we're still waiting to see how that will pan out. Clearly, Apple Intelligence has generated some interest among Apple users. When reporting Apple's first quarter earnings last week, CEO Tim Cook noted that iPhone sales were better in regions where the AI features are already available compared to where Apple Intelligence has yet to get support. With addition language support for Apple Intelligence coming in April, there figures to be a lot more users ready to see what all the AI fuss is about. That's another reason why work on Apple Intelligence is far from over, even if the AI tools are now enabled by default with Apple's latest iPhone software. There's some big features yet to come and new markets left to conquer.

Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.4: Seven new features and changes to expect - 9to5Mac

Apple Intelligence officially launched three months ago in iOS 18.1, and new features have steadily rolled out ever since. But the next iPhone update, iOS 18.4, is going to be especially big for new Apple Intelligence capabilities. Here are seven features and changes expected to arrive soon. One of the special 'wow' moments of using a Vision Pro is realizing that visionOS always knows what you're looking at. As of iOS 18.4, Siri in a sense will gain a similar power on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Onscreen awareness means you'll be able to make Siri requests that reference things you're looking at, and the assistant will know how to make sense of your words. So for example, if your sister sends you her new address in an iMessage, you can simply say, "Add this address to her contact," and Siri will do it with no further clarifying instructions. Using a system called App Intents, iOS 18.4 will enable Siri to perform hundreds of new app actions -- without ever needing to open the apps themselves. What will be even more impressive is Siri's ability to perform these actions across different apps. For example, you'll be able to ask Siri to find a specific photo, apply edits to it, then drop that photo into a specific folder in the Files app -- all using just your voice. Siri will also understand a lot more about you as an individual, tapping into the key knowledge about you that a real-life assistant would know. For example, you'll be able to reference a recipe a friend sent you -- even though you can't remember whether it was in an email, text, or note -- and Siri will find it for you. Apple's assistant will also be able to find and share info like your passport number, your calendar history, and more. Similar to the existing 'Priority' feature in the redesigned Mail app, AI will soon be able to surface the most important notifications right to the top of your notification stack. Priority notifications use Apple Intelligence's language understanding to determine what constitutes an especially important alert. This will enable users to do less notification management themselves, while never missing the most important updates. Apple originally demoed the Image Playground app with three distinct style options for images: Animation, Illustration, and Sketch. Currently though, the Sketch option is missing as of iOS 18.3. Expect to see it added in iOS 18.4, providing a new way of styling your original AI image creations. Apple has said that it's bringing proper Apple Intelligence support to the EU starting in April with iOS 18.4. Currently, AI features are only available on the Mac inside the EU, but soon both the iPhone and iPad will benefit from the Apple Intelligence feature suite too. Finally, Apple also plans to introduce new supported languages for Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.4. The company hasn't said exactly which languages are getting priority, but it has confirmed that the following will be supported some time this year: Chinese, English (India), English (Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese, 'and other languages.' After iOS 18.4 arrives, if all of these expected features ship, Apple will have released its full slate of initial Apple Intelligence features. Everything demoed at WWDC last year will be in users' hands. And not a moment too soon, since iOS 18.4's April release date won't be far away from June, and the next big wave of AI in iOS 19. Which of these Apple Intelligence additions are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments.

These 5 Apple Intelligence Features Are the Ones You'll Actually Use Each Day

Apple Intelligence features such as Image Playground and Genmoji, which generate images and custom emoji from text prompts, make for flashy demos. But which of Apple's AI tools are ones you'll turn to on a daily basis? After running the technology for months, a handful of the smart features now get used with regularity on my iPhone, iPad and Mac. You need an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro (or their Plus and Max variants) running iOS 18.3. This latest update enables Apple Intelligence automatically. More features will be added as time goes on -- and keep in mind that Apple Intelligence is still officially beta software -- but this is where Apple is starting its AI age. In an era when there are so many demands on our attention and seemingly less time to dig into longer topics... Sorry, what was I saying? Oh, right: How often have you wanted a "too long; didn't read" version of not just long emails but the fire hose of communication that blasts your way? The ability to summarize notifications, Mail messages and web pages is perhaps the most pervasive and least intrusive feature of Apple Intelligence so far. When a notification arrives, such as a text from a friend or group in Messages, the iPhone creates a short, single-sentence summary. Sometimes summaries are vague, and sometimes they're unintentionally funny, but so far I've found them to be more helpful than not. Summaries can also be generated from alerts by third-party apps like news or social media apps -- although I suspect that my outdoor security camera is picking up multiple passersby over time and not telling me that 10 people are stacked by the door. That said, Apple Intelligence definitely doesn't understand sarcasm or colloquialisms -- you can turn summaries off if you prefer. You can also generate a longer summary of emails in the Mail app: Tap the Summarize button at the top of a message to view a rundown of the contents in a few dozen words. In Safari, when viewing a page where the Reader feature is available, tap the Page Menu button in the address bar, tap Show Reader and then tap the Summary button at the top of the page. I was amused during the iOS 18 and the iPhone 16 releases that the main visual indicator of Apple Intelligence -- the full-screen, color-at-the-edges Siri animation -- was noticeably missing. Apple even lit up the edges of the massive glass cube of its Apple Fifth Avenue Store in New York City like a Siri search. Instead, iOS 18 used the same-old Siri sphere. Now, the modern Siri look has arrived as of iOS 18.1, but only on devices that support Apple Intelligence. With the new look are a few Siri interaction improvements: It's more forgiving if you stumble through a query, like saying the wrong word or interrupting yourself mid-thought. It's also better about listening after delivering results, so you can ask related followup questions. However, the ability to personalize answers based on what Apple Intelligence knows about you is still down the road. What did appear, as of iOS 18.2, was integration of ChatGPT, which you can now use as an alternate source of information. For some queries, if Siri doesn't have the answer right away, you're asked if you'd like to use ChatGPT instead. You don't need a ChatGPT account to take advantage of this (but if you do, you can sign in). Speaking of Siri, perhaps my favorite new feature is the ability to bring up the assistant without saying the words "Hey Siri" out loud. In my house, where I have HomePods and my family members use their own iPhones and iPads, I never know which device is going to answer my call (even though they're supposed to be smart enough to work it out). Plus, honestly, even after all this time I'm not always comfortable talking to my phone -- especially in public. It's annoying enough when people carry on phone conversations on speaker, I don't want to add to the hubbub by making Siri requests. Instead, I turn to a new feature called Tap to Siri. Double-tap the bottom edge of the screen on the iPhone or iPad to bring up the Siri search bar and the onscreen keyboard. On a Mac, go to System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri and choose a key combination under Keyboard shortcut, such as Press Either Command Key Twice. Yes, this involves more typing work than just speaking conversationally, but I can enter more specific queries and not wonder if my robot friend is understanding what I'm saying. Until iOS 18.1, the Photos app on the iPhone and iPad has lacked a simple retouch feature. Dust on the camera lens? Litter on the ground? Sorry, you need to deal with those and other distractions in the Photos app on MacOS or using a third-party app. Now Apple Intelligence includes Clean Up, an AI-enhanced removal tool, in the Photos app. When you edit an image and tap the Clean Up button, the iPhone analyzes the photo and suggests potential items to remove by highlighting them. Tap one or draw a circle around an area -- the app erases those areas and uses generative AI to fill in plausible pixels. In this first incarnation, Clean Up isn't perfect, and you'll often get better results in other dedicated image editors. But for quickly removing annoyances from photos, it's fine. Focus modes on the iPhone can be enormously helpful, such as turning on Do Not Disturb to insulate yourself from outside distractions. You can also create personalized Focus modes. For example, my Podcast Recording mode blocks outside notifications except from a handful of people during scheduled recording times. With Apple Intelligence enabled, a new Reduce Interruptions Focus mode is available. When active, it becomes a smarter filter for what gets past the wall holding back superfluous notifications. Even things that are not specified in your criteria for allowed notifications, such as specific people, might pop up. On my iPhone, for instance, that can include weather alerts or texts from my bank when a large purchase or funds transfer has occurred.