Apple Intelligence’s release date is almost here – why it’s a bigger deal than you think
The Apple Intelligence release date is quickly approaching, making it an exciting time to own one of the best iPhones.
The AI tools are one of the key selling points of the new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro, bringing features like proofreading and rewriting, summarizing, and AI photo editing to iOS 18. That’s not all, though: the upcoming launch of iOS 18.1 and the arrival of AI on iPhone is just the beginning, and even more Apple Intelligence features will arrive in the coming year.
So when is the Apple Intelligence release date? And is it actually bad? Or will consumers forget it even exists in a few months?
Apple Intelligence Release Date
Apple Intelligence is currently in testing through the public beta of iOS 18.1. This means we can expect Writing Tools, Clean Up, and Notification Summaries, to name just a few features, to arrive in October with the official release of iOS 18.1. We’ve already covered all of Apple Intelligence’s features and when you can expect them in detail, but here’s a quick overview of the expected release schedule:
Apple has confirmed that Apple Intelligence will arrive in October with iOS 18.1. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Genmoji and Image Playground will appear later this year in iOS 18.2, which is expected in December. Following on from these major updates, iOS 18.3 is expected around January and could potentially add some of the Apple Intelligence-powered Siri features. Finally, the full Siri Apple Intelligence makeover is expected in March next year as part of iOS 18.4, wrapping up the first year of Apple Intelligence features just in time for iOS 19 and WWDC 2025.
Based on these rumors and Apple’s own confirmation that Apple Intelligence is launching this month, we fully expect iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1 to arrive in the next few weeks.
Why it’s a big problem
The launch of Apple Intelligence is significant when it comes to the future of easily accessible AI, and Apple’s entry into the AI space could play a crucial role in the future of the technology. Let’s take a step back from AI powerhouses like OpenAI; your parents will likely get their first taste of AI in Apple Intelligence, as will many average consumers. That means Apple’s foray into AI, and its attempt to become “AI for the rest of us,” is a much bigger problem than the new AI features themselves.
iPhone users make up the largest share of the U.S. smartphone market, and Apple has built a successful business on the promise that its technology works right out of the box. With the arrival of Apple Intelligence, we will get a good idea of whether or not AI is ready to become an important part of our daily lives, or whether in its current form it is just a nice-to-have ‘ is the one we forgot. approximately with time. Will Apple Intelligence become a key element of the iPhone experience, like FaceID, or will it be the next example of Apple’s ideas that don’t deliver on their promise, like the discontinued Touch Bar?
Every AI-enabled smartphone these days, whether it’s the Google Pixel 9 or the Samsung S24 Ultra, has what seems like a repackaging of the same tools: writing, summarizing, photo editing, and a better voice assistant. Can Apple’s attempt surpass these Android offerings and offer something distinctive? And if so, do people even care?
As someone who writes about AI every day, I’m intrigued to see how the average consumer handles the idea of chatbots and AI-powered features built into operating systems. Apple’s vision for its Apple Intelligence-powered version of Siri, with personal context and on-screen awareness, is the AI addition to iOS I’m most excited about, but if the voice assistant doesn’t turn out to be as impressive as Apple’s WWDC 2024 demo suggested, it could quickly be seen as a high-profile failure.
There is a lot to look forward to in the world of AI; and Apple Intelligence, while perhaps not the most impressive use case we’ve ever seen for artificial intelligence, will be a turning point for the technology. But in which direction is your guess as good as mine: will Apple Intelligence catapult consumer AI into the mainstream? Or could it become another Apple Vision Pro – niche, and better executed by others?