With many of the best smartphones launched this year powered by AI features, the pressure is on for Apple to keep up. With the release of the iOS 18.1 developer beta, we’re getting our first taste of what Apple Intelligence has to offer. And more importantly, we now have a better understanding of how these new AI experiences may change the way we use iPhone 15 Pro in the future.
I’ve personally seen the benefits of having AI tools and features available on my phone – I can’t stop raving about the Pixel 8 Pro’s ability to answer calls for me with Call Screen, and the Galaxy Z Flip 6’s Interpreter Mode makes it easy to converse in a foreign language.
These AI features not only add value to your devices, but also save you the time and frustration of having to go through complex processes yourself – and of course, the same fundamental principles apply to Apple Intelligence.
As a reminder, I was using an early release beta to briefly test these new Apple Intelligence features on an iPhone 15 Pro, so they may not be in as polished a form as they could be, as things may be very different between the beta and the actual Apple Intelligence release later this year. I’ll just highlight all the things that stand out, including how practical and intuitive they are to use.
Siri: Long-awaited improvements
When we think of AI, the first thing that comes to mind is an intelligent voice assistant that can help us with everyday tasks. Of all the new Apple Intelligence features we’re trying out in the iOS 18.1 developer beta, this new version of Siri is a refreshing change that Apple badly needs.
Sure, Siri has a new look and animations, but the visual changes are nothing compared to the voice she uses. This version of Siri has a more natural conversational tone, with less robotic speech and weird pauses between words. I also like that you can not only carry on a conversation, but also interrupt Siri to ask another question.
This is great, but Siri still sometimes struggles to answer more detailed questions. For example, when I asked Siri who the Yankees won last night, it gave me the correct answer, but when I asked which pitcher won, it just showed a pop-up screen with the search results. The answer is easily obtainable with a Google search, so hopefully Siri will get even better as the beta is further tuned.
We also asked Siri some simple questions about the product. For example, we asked what the password for our Wi-Fi network is, and Siri opened the Passwords and Passkeys app and showed it to us. Meanwhile, we asked Siri to disable the grid lines in the camera app, and she couldn’t. This is an example of how Siri needs to be improved, because something as simple as this doesn’t require us to open the settings menu and dig into the camera settings to change them.
Finally, you can rely on Siri to compose an email from scratch with just good old-fashioned voice commands. With a simple request to write an email to a specific person, Siri walks you through the whole process of filling out the content of your message, including the subject line. It’s one of the ways Apple Intelligence is ingrained in the apps. However, when I asked Siri to take me to the nearest train station in an Uber, the Assistant simply opened the app for me.
The writing tool is built on a set of Apple Intelligence features, but the premise is no different to implementations we’ve seen on other phones. It’s similar to the Chat Assist feature on the Galaxy S24 Ultra that I tried, offering different writing styles to choose from in your messages. In this case, Apple Intelligence offers the options Friendly, Professional, and Concise.
Each option rewrites what I’ve noted down in the style I choose. Like the S24 Ultra’s chat assist, it’s more of a novelty and I don’t see myself using it very often. I don’t have much use for these AI-assisted writing styles, but I can see them being useful in certain situations. You can see the results in the screenshot above.
You can also load long emails or web pages into Apple Intelligence and have it generate summaries, lists, tables, and key points for you. I used my long-term Google Pixel 8 Pro review as a test to see what Apple Intelligence can do, and as expected, I think all of its features work great. I took two paragraphs from the Call Screen section and Apple’s feature sums it up in one simple sentence. Meanwhile, if you select the list format, it gives you three main points:
That being said, it’s hard to say with confidence that it’s a compelling case for an AI. In fact, I know what my pronunciation sounds like when I type, so changing that would feel kind of weird.
Email: TL;DR style prioritization
When it comes to email, the Gmail app is my favorite choice because it has more features and functionality, and Apple is hoping to win back some of its supporters now that the Mail app is more useful thanks to Apple Intelligence.
What immediately catches my eye are the priority messages at the top of each mailbox. That is, things to pay attention to. It’s still early days, but I’ll need more emails and time to see the benefits of priority messages, because so far the only priority messages I’ve seen have simply been security warnings for recent logins with my account.
But given that security and privacy are paramount to Apple Intelligence, I suppose it does its job of notifying me of these messages, but I’m interested to see what other emails take priority as I continue to use Mail.
When you select an email, Apple Intelligence also gives you a quick summary option. Rather than read through an email about an upcoming event from a nonprofit, you can get a TL;DR-style summary that condenses the message into a bite-sized, easy-to-understand summary. Considering my extremely short attention span, I can certainly see myself using this feature frequently to save myself the hassle of skimming through less important topics.
All of this is a good start towards making the Mail app a more viable option for iPhone users, but I’d like to see more action on sifting through the hundreds of emails we receive every day, automatically filtering out what needs our attention and what should be ignored. I really hate seeing 100+ unread messages in my inbox, so it would be nice if Apple Intelligence could manage that better than Gmail.
Notes, photos, notifications
Other Apple Intelligence features included in the iOS 18.1 developer beta are ones I’m still getting a feel for and understanding. In the Notes app, you can record and transcribe audio recordings, and Apple Intelligence will generate a summary for you. When I tried it, everything I read out loud was transcribed right in the Notes app, along with a two-sentence summary. I find this useful for longer presentations so I don’t have to write everything down word for word.
The Photos app now has the option to create memories from photos taken with the iPhone 15 Pro. However, you can’t try this feature right away because you’ll see a message that says the photos are still processing and asking you to allow this. But the cool thing about this feature is that you can enter a description of what you want, and Apple Intelligence will create a kind of storybook with images and audio that show that memory.
Finally, Notification Summary takes all the notifications you receive from Messages and Mail and provides a summary through the notification panel. So far, I haven’t used this feature yet, but I suspect you’ll need a day’s worth of notifications for this feature to be effective.
Apple Intelligence: Outlook
There’s still a long way to go before we can realize the true value of Apple Intelligence. The features I’ve tested aren’t groundbreaking. But this is just a small part of what Apple will show off at WWDC 2024. Plus, there’s still time to tweak these features.
What I’m most excited about are some of the generative AI capabilities that Apple Intelligence is expected to offer, such as being able to create custom images in Image Playground based on a description, and deeper third-party integration with Siri to perform more complex actions beyond just opening an app. Naturally, these are indications of how much time you can save and ultimately be more productive with your iPhone.