Despite being the main selling point of the iPhone 16 and iOS 18 as a whole, it’s taken Apple over a month to get Apple Intelligence into the hands of users through the recent iOS 18.1 / iPadOS 18.1 / macOS Sequoia 15.1 updates. And yet, it’s still incomplete, with plans to roll out the entire suite of AI features as late as December. No matter. This small taste of the Apple Intelligence lifestyle is enough to pass judgement.
We’ve spent the past couple of days messing about with Apple Intelligence on an M2 iPad Air, getting a feel for the new writing tools, overhauled Photos app, and supposedly smarter Siri. It’s worth noting that only those Macs and iPads repping an ‘M’ chipset (or A17 Pro in the Mini) can access the new AI, while iPhone owners will require a 15 Pro and up. Here’s how you can get in on the fun if you have a supported device.
Run-of-the-mill Writing Tools
We immediately bolted to try out the array of what Apple calls ‘Writing Tools’ at hand, which are available anywhere text is by the simple expedient of selecting the text to summon Apple Intelligence. It’ll proofread, rewrite, and even summarise anything thrown at it in a matter of seconds. It’s a comprehensive selection of tools, sure, but one we felt rather disappointed with by the time we walked away from them.
Some features certainly stood out above others. It proved itself more than up to the task of proofreading – rooting out the typos and grammatical errors and offering decent fixes that improved the selection, though fell flat when it came to rewriting the text. The same goes for the ‘friendly’ and ‘professional’ tones that can be applied, which fail to capture our voice accurately or more often than not, at all, and ultimately feel wholly artificial.
Apple Intelligence being, well, intelligent, could (and should) improve in that regard over time, though we don’t have high hopes. Writing Tools excelled when it came time to format our text in simple ways – whether by making it more concise, summarising it entirely, or turning it into a table that would slot right into a slideshow at your next corporate meeting without anyone the wiser.
Also present is the new audio transcription feature, available via a regular phone call or a traditional recording. We’ve yet to test it out in a real call, though we did manage to capture an entire Stuff meeting with middling results. It struggled to keep up with the cacophony of voices hurled in its direction, providing only a somewhat accurate representation of the minutes, paling in comparison to that of our other AI tool…
Stick to recording a single voice at a time, however, and Apple Intelligence became a far more reliable note-taker than we’d seen before. It’s not perfect – there were a few minor errors here and there – but it successfully captured 98% of what was said, grammar and all.
A not-so-clean getaway
It’s difficult to believe anything truly intelligent lives behind those Writing Tools, but the overhauled Photos app might convince you there’s some real artificial intelligence pulling the strings in the background. Not only has the app received a makeover that’ll take some getting used to, but the new Clean Up tool lives to remove any of the unwanted clutter in the background of your otherwise perfect photo.
It’s really as simple as clicking a button and watching Apple do its thing. Find the picture you’re looking to edit, open the settings, and click Clean Up. Apple automatically shrouds certain objects it reckons you’d want to remove in a glow that can be deleted with a click. If you’re after something more specific, rub your finger over the object you want disappeared. It did a halfway decent job of scrubbing away our digital editor.
As with everything Apple Intelligence, it isn’t perfect and has limitations. For instance, Clean Up shines brightest when focusing on smaller objects in the background, and struggles to pull off the removal of larger objects in the foreground, like a human being. See those awkward shadows where our digital editor once stood? Or the missing frame on the glass? Give it bright, unbusy images and Clean Up will soar.
Our new iPad’s gallery wasn’t nearly full enough to try out the new ‘Memory Movies’ feature which supposedly “finds the best photos and videos, crafts a storyline with unique chapters and a narrative arc, and sets it to music,” all from a couple of sentences fed to the machine running the show. People living exclusively within the Walled Garden for some time should have no issues getting this right, especially if they’re hooked up to iCloud.
What did work was the vastly improved search feature within Photos. Rather than hit up the search bar with the usual ‘IMG_0031’, you can instead use natural language to find what you’re after. It’s basic, very basic, but we had little trouble finding the image we were looking for. It’s all about searching for the right keyword, like ‘black labrador’ or ‘headset’. Give it anything too complicated, and it may not dish out any results at all. Refine your search, and try again. You’ll eventually get the hang of what to ask, and build from there.
Siriously unremarkable
We’ll just say it now. If you weren’t already invested in Siri as a digital assistant before the update, the Apple Intelligence boost isn’t going to change that. But for daily Siri users, her improved understanding of the various vocal ticks like ‘uhhh’ and ‘ummm’ are almost essential. We tried tripping Siri up to no avail. When initially asked to set an alarm for 09h00 before immediately switching the time to 08h00, Siri didn’t bat an eye.
Other than that, Siri is as unremarkable as it ever was. It’s got some new powers – like answering any tech-related queries regarding your specific Apple device, and a glowy border to show it’s listening (we finally understand the ‘It’s Glowtime‘ event tagline) that do nothing to enhance the experience. We had the most luck with the new text feature, allowing users to type out their requests when talking aloud isn’t an option. The results were… as expected.
Apple Intelligence verdict
Apple Intelligence was always going to have a hard time blowing us away, but that’s more due to the state of AI in general. Apple’s taken the safe route, sticking to the features that are difficult to screw up, but still doesn’t quite hit the mark. It performed best when messing around with the overhauled Photos app, with some success giving the Writing Tools something to do, and minor improvements to Siri, but none that will keep us around.
We don’t expect that to be the case forever. Given some time, Apple could massively turn around those Writing Tools, make the photos app even better and add the features that users are keen to get their hands on. Those include image generation, generative emojis, ChatGPT integration, and Visual Intelligence – Apple’s cribbed version of Google Lens. Whether they can sway our thoughts remains to be seen… in December.