Your iPhone might be getting a bunch of AI features soon. Let’s talk about them.
At its WWDC 2024 keynote, Apple did what we expected and spent a ton of time talking about “Apple Intelligence,” the new batch of AI features coming to its devices. It was a blazing-fast presentation that focused more on high-level “check out this cool thing AI can do!” sales pitches than in-depth looks at how everything works, so it’s hard to say how well they work right now.
But these features are all coming to iOS 18 later this year, like it or not. You will need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer to use them, though. Anyway, here are five big AI features coming to iPhones this year.
Prioritize notifications will organize your feed
Credit: Apple
One of the AI features Apple showed off that will probably be pretty popular is prioritized notifications. Apple said your iPhone will know to put the “most important” notifications at the top of your feed and will even include short summaries of stacked notifications as you scroll.
Apple, of course, didn’t really say what “most important” means or how your iPhone will decide what is most important. We’ll all find out together later this year, I suppose.
Rewrite, proofread, and summarize text will help you write emails
Credit: Apple
If you’re the kind of person who finds it really difficult and stressful to write emails, Apple Intelligence purports to help. With the new AI, you’ll be able to highlight an email you’ve written and choose a different tone to better fit the situation. It’ll also spruce up your grammar and suggest better word choices.
You’ll also be able to select a batch of text and ask the AI to summarize it for you, either as a paragraph, bulleted list, or table.
AI image generation will create custom images to send to friends and family
Credit: Apple
This is a big one, for better or worse.
Apple Intelligence will let you generate custom images using text prompts and other tools as part of an all-encompassing new app called Image Playground. These features are also built into Messages. You can choose from three styles (animation, illustration, or sketch), use text to add details, and even add elements from your photo library.
The images Apple showed during its presentation looked like AI images, so you likely won’t fool anyone if you send these to your friends.
Automatic audio transcription will transcribe and summarize Voice Notes and call recordings
Credit: Apple
Apple is finally catching up to something Google introduced before COVID-19 existed: automatic audio transcription. Whether you record something via Voice Notes or on the Phone app (oh, by the way, you can record phone calls now), you can get an auto-generated transcription and text summary of what was said.
Genmoji will entertain your parents
Credit: Apple
Finally, on iOS 18, you’ll be able to use text prompts to generate your own emoji. Appropriately called “Genmoji,” these can be used exactly like regular emoji, as in-line text emoticons, or as Tapback responses to text messages. You can even create Genmoji based on photos of real people.
