- Apple Intelligence for iPhone 16 will start beta testing in October.
- However, some AI features unveiled at WWDC in June won't be available until 2025.
A lot of the chatter about the new iPhone 16 has been about how it can support Apple Intelligence — but there are still a lot of questions about when, exactly, all the cool new AI features will be available.
Apple has touted the iPhone 16 as a phone "built from the ground up" for artificial intelligence. It hit the market on Friday, but Apple Intelligence won't begin rolling out to iOS 18 until October — and it'll be in beta, Bloomberg reported.
And at first, it'll include just a few features. Some of the AI tools highlighted at June's Worldwide Developer Conference and subsequent ads won't come to iOS until 2025.
Apple itself has yet to give a clear-cut calendar of the Apple Intelligence rollout — the fine print at the bottom of its site says some features will be "coming over the course of the next year."
Here's an estimated timeline for the US English Apple Intelligence release based on what experts on Apple have said since WWDC.
October is the initial Apple Intelligence beta test.
Since it's in beta, the iOS update could put iPhone users at risk of performance issues and security vulnerability. But excitement about AI will likely push some iPhone 16 users to take that chance to test out Apple Intelligence.
Here's what's coming in the first drop, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
- Updates to the Messages app, including more extensive reply suggestions
- A new section of the Mail app that categorizes high-priority messages.
- The Reduce Interruptions Focus mode — similar to Do Not Disturb, but your phone will allow alerts from messages it deems urgent.
- Email and text summaries in notifications.
- Writing Tools, which will help with summarizing, proofreading, and editing bodies of text.
- A new Siri animation and interface that will make the perimeter of a device's screen glow, along with a "Type to Siri" feature.
- Short summaries of web pages when using Reader Mode on Safari.
There might be more to come in November and December.
More colorful features could be coming later this fall.
- Genmoji are emojis that can be personalized using a photo and AI to create a mini avatar of a person.
- The Image Playground app will allow users to create AI-generated photos.
- OpenAI's ChatGPT will also be integrated into eligible iPhones.
The new Siri and more languages are coming in 2025 and beyond.
Apple has been promoting a "more personal Siri" in its marketing, but Gurman reported that it won't come out for another six months.
In one clip from Apple, actor Bella Ramsey asks Siri to recall the name of a man they met months prior. The revamped Siri assistant instantly reminds Ramsey of the man's name, which is impressive, but won't be available on iPhone 15s or iPhone 16s until 2025.
According to the company, Apple Intelligence will first be available in American English and will "quickly expand" to other English-speaking countries, including Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and the UK in December.
Apple said more languages are coming "over the course of the next year." So far, they include Indian English, Singaporean English, Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese, and more.