Everything you need to know about Apple’s take on AI
Dubbed Apple Intelligence, Apple’s suite of artificial intelligence (AI) features are the key highlight of the iPhone 16’s capabilities. These features are only possible on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 family of devices, owing to the more demanding requirements of AI.
Apple Intelligence was announced in September this year, but the promised features are still rolling out on supported Apple devices, and that too in specific regions with support for a limited range of languages. The features — which we’ll discuss in a bit — are also not very good at the time of writing and still require a lot of work to fine-tune.
Apple Intelligence requirements
Artificial intelligence works by heavily processing a large volume of data and calculating a suitable output based on your input and complex math. This heavy processing load requires an AI-powered device to have a lot of RAM and dedicated processing power for AI.
Apple Intelligence thus requires at least 8GB of RAM and the presence of a powerful NPU or neural processing unit. Like the CPU (necessary for general purpose computing) and GPU (necessary for enabling graphics), a dedicated processor is designed specifically for accelerating AI tasks.
Secondly, the NPU is far more efficient than a CPU or GPU for handling AI tasks, which makes it essential for keeping battery life and heat in check.
The only phones that meet these requirements are the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 family of devices. The iPhone 15 has a powerful NPU but can’t use Apple Intelligence as it’s limited to 6GB of RAM. Interestingly, Apple upgraded all the basic Macs to have 16GB of RAM because it needs more memory for Apple Intelligence.
One important thing to note about Apple Intelligence is that Apple claims that the entire system is private by design. All data is processed locally by default (i.e., on your phone), and if data must leave your phone for further processing, Apple will first take your permission before doing so.
Apple Intelligence in iPhone 16
The following Apple Intelligence features are available on the iPhone 16.
Priority Notifications: Apple uses AI to analyse notifications and your usage patterns to determine which are more relevant to you. It then attempts to summarise these notifications to deliver all the information you need at a glance. This works in both the Notification window as well as the Mail app.
Genmoji: This is a custom emoji generator that creates personalised emojis based on prompts that you provide.
Image playground: This is an image generator, but one that has more general purpose and more deeply integrated into Apple services such as Notes and Keynote. Image generation abilities are more limited than what you’d find when using models like Dall-E or Midjourney, but they’re good enough for school projects and the like.
Visual intelligence: Here, Apple allows you to learn about your surroundings, and even specific objects, by analysing data from the camera. This extends to real-time translation of signs and text, auto-detection of email IDs and phone numbers, the ability to solve complex mathematical equations and problems, and more. ChatGPT may be used to assist Apple Intelligence when needed, and only with user consent.
Writing tools: One interesting new feature is the ability to get Apple Intelligence to enhance or summarise text. AI can help change the tone of a message or email, summarise a long conversation or document, and even use ChatGPT to enhance a report.
Audio transcripts: Another new feature is the ability to transcribe and summarise voice memos with Apple Intelligence. This also extends to phone calls (which can now be recorded) and meeting notes.
These are all the Apple Intelligence features available on the latest iPhone 16. Apple may add more new features in the near future.
