Though the iPhone 16 is out and about all across the world, users are still waiting for its most marketed feature: Apple Intelligence. Mark Gurman — Bloomberg’s Apple insider — has now given us a clear date for when Apple’s AI features will begin rolling out: October 28.
Yep, apparently when Apple said October it meant when the month would be almost over. And, according to Gurman, the first phase of Apple Intelligence is going to contain very limited features.
On October 28 Apple Intelligence will be released to the general public with only one confirmed major feature: notification summaries. We’ve already gotten a look at how these work due to Beta testing and it’s a solid addition to iOS but nothing groundbreaking.
Gurman says the second phase, which will launch alongside iOS 18.2, will include the ChatGPT integration and Genmoji generation. In case you’re unaware, the former will help enhance practicality and the latter will let you make custom emojis using image generation AI.
All of this will be slowly released on iPhone. | Video credit — Apple
The biggest change — a completely new Siri that can directly control your apps — won’t roll out until iOS 18.4 in March of next year according to Gurman. Often regarded as the worst smartphone assistant, Siri is undergoing a redesign that will make it completely unrecognizable from its former self.
Siri will be able to interface with apps on your phone to carry out actions you may ask it to. It will also be able to comb through your personal data to answer queries or find specific photos and videos. So all those super cool demonstrations of Apple Intelligence won’t really be possible until some time next year.
Gurman has previously stated that he found Apple Intelligence underwhelming compared to Google’s Gemini. I’ve often found Gemini to be lacking, so I can only imagine what Apple Intelligence is like. Hopefully, Apple’s take on AI will actually be as good as the company claims it to be.
Especially if the company takes its time to develop it now that Apple is moving away from yearly product releases.
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