Apple Intelligence: Key Features and Alternatives for Non-Compatible Devices

Now That Apple Intelligence Is Here, These Are the 4 Features You'll Actually Use Daily

After months of hype, the first sets of Apple Intelligence features are here -- but which ones are you actually going to use? I've been running the technology since it first appeared in the iOS betas, and these are the four features I find myself using on a day-to-day basis. You need an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro (or their Plus and Max variants) running iOS 18.2 and, crucially, you must request access to Apple Intelligence to take advantage of these new technologies. Once you're in, here's what you can realistically expect. 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. If you're still tapping your fingers in the Apple Intelligence waitlist queue, you'll also see the Siri sphere for now. 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 in 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). 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.

The 5 best Apple Intelligence features to try right now on your new iPhone, iPad, or Mac

Did you receive a new Apple product over the holidays? Lucky you! Have you seen ads for Apple Intelligence everywhere, and you're looking forward to trying Apple's AI features? We're here to help. Whether you received an A17 Pro iPad mini, an iPhone 16, or an M4 Mac mini this festive season, there are plenty of Apple Intelligence features waiting to be discovered on your new Apple device. We've selected the five best Apple Intelligence features for you to try below, but remember, more will be released over the course of 2025, so you're just getting started on your Apple Intelligence journey. Here are our picks for the Apple AI-fueled features you should try on your new iPhone, iPad, or Mac. The best place to start with Apple Intelligence is Genmoji, Apple's take on AI-generated emojis. It's a fun tool that all the family will fall in love with, it's easy to use, and most of all, it's genuinely useful. Whether you want to create emojis of lions on skateboards or Santa on his sleigh, the possibilities are endless. Genmoji even allows you to create emojis based on people in your Photos library, which makes for hilarious results that will go down a treat in any of your group chats. Genmoji is currently only available on compatible iPhones and iPads running iOS 18.2 or iPadOS 18.2. If you received a Mac for Christmas, you'll need to wait until macOS Sequoia 15.3 launches at some point in early 2025. How to use Genmoji Writing Tools works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, but it really shines on Apple's laptops and desktop computers. Designed to help you proofread and rewrite text to get it looking and sounding as good as possible, Writing Tools is essentially Apple's take on Grammarly, but built in. You'll find Writing Tools scattered throughout iOS, iPadOS, and macOS - just highlight some text and look for Writing Tools where you'd usually find copy or paste. It's set to become an essential tool for lots of people, and will go down a treat for students who need an extra pair of eyes on their work - think of it as a supercharged autocorrect. Clean Up will help fix up your festive photos and other snaps by enabling you to easily remove elements from the background. Whether that's wrapping paper on the floor or clutter that looks out of place, Apple Intelligence can make your photos much easier on the eye. This AI tool works similarly to Google's Magic Eraser, and you'll find it in the Photos app in the same photo-editing suite where you'd find iPhone editing tools. The best iPhones are often our most-used cameras, so the addition of a powerful AI editing tool is hugely helpful. Have you been waiting for Siri to level up? ChatGPT is now available inside Apple's voice assistant, meaning that even highly complex questions can be answered using OpenAI's AI model. It's built intuitively into Siri, you can ask a question and then opt-in to send that prompt to ChatGPT's servers, or just ask Siri to ask ChatGPT directly and skip Apple's answer altogether. Siri will receive a major upgrade next year, including on-screen awareness and personal context, so expect your iPhone, iPad, or Mac's voice assistant to improve even further in 2025. One of the first Apple Intelligence features you'll notice is Notification summaries, and so far I've had a very love/hate relationship with the summary tool. Apple Intelligence now groups your notifications together and summarizes them, so you can get a glimpse at them without opening your Notification Centre. While it works most of the time, there have been concerns about how Apple summarizes important notifications, with one user even going viral because Apple Intelligence made his breakup with his girlfriend far more brutal than it needed to be. The feature will likely improve over time, and you can simply turn Notification summaries off in settings if you want. That said, we suggest you give it a try - you might just love Apple Intelligence's summarizing capabilities. Were you lucky enough to get an iPhone 16 for Christmas? If so you've got a bonus Apple Intelligence feature to test out on your shiny new device. Visual Intelligence lets you snap a photo of anything using Camera Control, the 'button' on the right side of your iPhone, and then ask Google or ChatGPT for information about the image. It's a handy tool that's well implemented into the iPhone 16's hardware, and I've found I use it frequently because of how quickly it can be accessed. This feature is exclusive to the latest iPhones with the Camera Control, but perhaps we'll also see it on iPads at some point in the future.

Have Apple Intelligence FOMO? Don't. 3 Work-Arounds To Consider

CNET Voices is a group of industry creators, contributors and emerging thought leaders that have paired with CNET's award-winning editorial team to provide you with unique content from different perspectives. If you're like me and don't have Apple Intelligence yet because you own an older Apple device, don't fret. You can use other apps to recreate some of its initial features. Released in October 2024, Apple Intelligence is a suite of generative AI tools built natively into the iPhone, iPad, MacBook and iMac, and accessible via the cloud on these devices. With the release of iOS 18.2 earlier this month, Apple Intelligence has message summaries, various writing tools and image creation like Image Playground and Genmoji. But you'll have to be on a newer device to access these tools. For example, you need an iPhone 15 Pro/15 Pro Max or iPhone 16 (any model) to use Apple Intelligence. As a creator who focuses on introducing business professionals to various AI tools, I was bummed at first that Apple Intelligence requires a hardware upgrade. Then I realized some of its initial features can be replicated by learning your way around various other apps. Here are a few ways I'm doing that. Apple Intelligence integrates an AI writing assistant across all apps and devices, letting you access features such as spelling checks, tone adjustment, summarization, proofreading and smart replies. Two non-Apple tools can deliver similar results with just a few additional clicks. Grammarly has been popular among consumers for quite some time now. The app offers spelling and grammar checks, style suggestions and tone adjustments. Many people don't realize Grammarly also has an iOS keyboard extension, so you won't have to leave your iMessage, Notes or email app to use it. ChatGPT is another favorite when it comes to AI writing assistants. As a standalone iOS app, you can download it for free from the App Store, and iOS 18.2 gives the option to integrate ChatGPT with Siri. Now with GPT-4o, ChatGPT is faster, cheaper and produces higher-quality content than its predecessors. You can use ChatGPT to come up with ideas, as well as titles, outlines and even the entirety of the content you want to create. Regardless of which AI app you use for writing assistance, make sure you review the content before sharing it with others. Human review and intervention are key to this process. Furthermore, if you ever choose to create and publish content entirely using AI, you should indicate it with a disclaimer. Apple Intelligence's AI can analyze photos from your library and quickly find the ones you're looking for (i.e., "Katie with stickers on her face"). The new Image Playground and Genmoji features in iOS 18.2 let you generate custom images, sketches and emojis without third-party apps. (Note that these features won't be supported in China or the EU as of this writing due to regulatory restrictions.) Google Photos and Dropbox have similar AI features that automatically tag photos based on objects, locations, faces and events, allowing users to search for specific images without manually categorizing them. These features aren't without their flaws, but they generally work well. Google Photos offers many of the same features touted in Apple Intelligence, and I've been a loyal user for over six years. Google Photos automatically recognizes different people using facial recognition, allowing you to easily access all the photos and videos of a certain person. When in doubt, Google Photos will occasionally ask you to manually identify people. There's also the "most relevant to your search" feature, which allows you to enter a search term, then see results displayed based on relevance rather than date. For example, when I searched in Google Photos for a specific element like "red scarf," here were the results. To get started, Google Photos recommends that you try searching for phrases or ideas, such as: Or, use names of friends and family you've added under People, like: Dropbox offers a solid alternative to Google Photos. But it's important to note that this AI-powered image search (as a feature) is only available to Dropbox Plus, Family, Professional, Standard, Business, Advanced, Business Plus and Enterprise customers. You can search for any element or feature represented in the photos. For example, here are the results returned from my Dropbox account when I searched "restaurant." If there are too many results or file types mixed in, you can use Dropbox's built-in filters to narrow them down, filtering by images, videos, PDFs, documents, dates taken and even image dimensions. The downside of Dropbox photos is that people in these photos are not tagged automatically using facial recognition, so you won't be able to easily search for photos of a particular person the same way you can in Google Photos. Apple Intelligence leverages AI to analyze your text messages, calendar invites, notes and photos, prioritizing and summarizing notifications to save you time and minimize interruptions. So far, consumers haven't been wowed. To streamline your notifications, consider first removing apps you no longer need on your phone. Then, take advantage of a few built-in iOS features. I love using Focus modes, which allow me to create different profiles (Do Not Disturb, Work, Sleep, Personal) to control the notifications I receive based on the time of day and context. You can create custom Focus modes to allow notifications to come from specific apps or people, or automate them based on time and location. Apple's built-in notification features (without Apple Intelligence) are useful and sufficient in most cases. I recommend going through the settings for each of your apps (Go to Settings > Notifications) and deciding which ones need to have notifications turned on. Some apps, such as home security apps, also have the option to turn on Critical Alerts, which will deliver notifications with sound immediately, regardless of settings. Given that Apple Intelligence is still new, it may be wise to hold off on a significant investment in a new device. Apple Intelligence features will most likely improve over time, but until then, you can still start using AI in your day-to-day life without the fancy upgrades. Find me on YouTube to discover more AI tools that can help you in your everyday online life.