After many months of promises, and plenty of beta testing, Apple is finally rolling out iOS 18.1 — bringing Apple Intelligence to the masses. Well part of Apple Intelligence, at least, because not every single promised feature is arriving right away. Instead, we’re getting a rolling release, with new features now scheduled to show up in future iOS 18.2, 18.3 and 18.4 updates.
It’s a little bit confusing, I know, but if you’re wondering why certain AI features are apparently missing from your iPhone it’s because they’re still works in progress. That’s not to say iOS 18.1 isn’t a pretty meaty update, with plenty of new features for you to enjoy. Here are all the Apple Intelligence features launching as part of iOS 18.1 — and which ones will require a little more patience.
Apple Intelligence device support — Which iPhone do you need?
iOS 18.1 is rolling out to every iPhone up to (and including) the 2018’s iPhone Xs, so there’s an update for everyone rolling out from today. Not every phone will be getting Apple Intelligence, since that’s limited to a handful of recent iPhones — specifically devices with 8GB of RAM.
Unless you have an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro Max, Apple Intelligence will be completely out of your reach. As far as we know this situation won’t be changing in the near future, so older iPhone owners shouldn’t ever expect there to be a surprise AI upgrade.
Apple Intelligence features in iOS 18.1
Writing Tools is a feature that’s available throughout iOS 18.1, available wherever you’re able to type. The idea here is that these tools will improve your written work in a variety of ways, including checking spelling and grammar, rewriting sections of text in a brand new tone, and a summarization tool that can give you an overview of highlighted portions of text.
You can check out our guide on how to use Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools here.
Create a Movie Memory
The Photos app now has the ability to create what Apple calls a Movie Memory. Based on your written prompts, the app will use AI to piece together photos, and videos to create a movie slideshow.
Photo Clean Up
AI photo editing tools can perform miracles on your snaps, fixing up problems that would otherwise ruin your photo reel. Photo Clean Up is Apple’s take on Google’s Magic Eraser, with the ability to identify unwanted objects or people in your photos, then remove them before filling in the gaps with generative AI.
Natural Language Search in Photos
Apple also made big changes to Photos’ search feature, to the point where it should actually be able to find what you’re looking for. This is all down to the new Natural Language search feature, which is able to understand more complex search requests. That means you don’t have to stick to individual words and a complicated selection of filters to find the photos you want.
Notification summaries
We all know the pain of having to sift through an avalanche of notifications, unable to figure out which ones are important without checking them individually. Thankfully iOS 18.1 lets AI do all the hard work, filtering out the less useful notifications and keeping you apprised of the more important or actionable alerts.
Siri Enhancements
Siri has been long overdue an upgrade, and while there are still some changes yet to come iOS 18.1 is making big changes to Apple’s AI assistant. Siri is now able to converse with a
more conversational tone, while also having a better understanding of all the things you ask it. In other words, it’s now more human-like than ever before, and can carry on conversations beyond the initial voice command.
Plus you can now
type to Siriand communicate without having to use your voice. Just in case you’re in situations where normal voice commands aren’t appropriate.
Priority messages in Mail & Messages
If your inbox is like mine, you get a lot of emails each day — too many to read them all. Which ones are important and actually need taking care of first? Apple Intelligence can help you out, detecting time-sensitive emails and pushing them to the very top of your inbox.
Smart reply
For those of you that never know how to respond to emails and messages, Smart Reply will be an absolute lifesaver. This feature lets you choose from some AI-generated replies, with Apple Intelligence also able to understand the contents of the message and adapt your possible responses accordingly.
Message summaries
If you still don’t have time to read an entire email or text from start to finish, perhaps because it’s a little too long, Apple Intelligence can summarize it all for you. Giving you the broad strokes of what the message is about, with more detail than a basic excerpt might, letting you figure out whether you need to go back and read it in more detail.
Reduce Interruptions Focus
iOS 18.1 brings a new Focus mode called “Reduce Interruptions," which uses AI. to prioritize your notifications and only let through the alerts that are actually important. That way you can get on with whatever needs doing, while still having the benefit or knowing when something urgent is going on. The core part of this Focus is called “Intelligent Breakthrough & Silencing” which lets you apply similar conditions on all your existing Focus modes as well.
Summarized audio recordings
Not only can iOS 18.1 let you record and transcribe phone calls, provided you use Apple’s phone app, it can summarize the contents of that conversation. That way it’s much easier to refer back to the call and figure out what was going on and when, without having to sift through the entire recording or transcript. This summary feature also applies to any recordings you make in the Notes app as well.
Apple Intelligence features still to come
Visual Intelligence
An iPhone 16-exclusive feature, Visual Intelligence is essentially Apple’s take on Google Lens. Albeit with the benefit of letting you access the features via the Camera Control button. Visual Intelligence is essentially an AI Vision-style feature, using the camera to view and analyze the world around you.
Whether you want to translate text, search the web for things you see in real life, and so on. Visual Intelligence is coming with iOS 18.2, and is currently available in the iOS 18.2 developer beta.
Image Playground
It wouldn’t be AI if there wasn’t the option to create images out of nowhere, and that’s what Apple’s Image Playground is all about. You offer up a prompt of what you want to see, and Image Playground will produce relevant images for you.
ChatGPT
Apple doesn’t have its own chatbot, but it is bringing one to iOS 18.2 thanks to a partnership with OpenAI — developers of ChatGPT. The chatbot will be built into Siri, letting you talk to ChatGPT and send prompts to the chatbot just as you would Apple’s own AI assistant. The difference being that ChatGPT has access to even more information and features. ChatGPT can also integrate with Image Playground and Writing Tools, letting you generate images and text across a wide number of apps — regardless of Siri’s involvement. Read more about ChatGPT and iOS 18.2 here to learn what it can do.
Genmoji
Ever found yourself needing an emoji, but none of the official options quite fit? Genmoji is a feature coming to Apple Messages in iOS 18.2, letting you offer prompts for custom emoji that will be created using generative AI.
Siri’s Personal Context
While Siri has had some important upgrades in iSS 18.2, the biggest upgrades likely aren’t coming until iOS 18.4. So if you were waiting on Siri getting better control and awareness of what’s going on in your phone, it’s going to be a while yet.
These features include on-screen awareness, which lets Siri see what’s happening on screen when you’re talking to it, and what Apple calls Personal Context — which lets Siri remember details unique to you and answer questions accordingly. This effectively makes the AI assistant behave more like a real human being when you talk. Siri will also be able to gain access to more apps, and let you control what’s happening in software that was otherwise off limits.
Image Wand
Another image generation feature, Image Wand lets you turn your hand-drawn sketches into more detailed images via the Notes app. According to Apple, Image Wand can also create images using context from the surrounding area if needed. Just in case your own sketching skills aren’t great — which is definitely true for me. This should arrive in iOS 18.2.
Support for more countries and languages
iOS 18.1 officially only brings Apple Intelligence to the U.S., though other regions can access the features if they set their system to U.S. English. That’s going to change going forward, with Apple confirming that other regions and languages will get official Apple intelligence support in the near future. In fact the U.K., South Africa, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are expected to get support with iOS 18.2.
Apple has also confirmed that Apple Intelligence will be available in Chinese, French, Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Vietnamese and more languages at some point in 2025 with iOS 18.4.
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