iOS 18: these Apple Intelligence features won’t be ready before 2025

Apple is not expected to introduce its most important Apple Intelligence features in September, when ‌iOS 18‌ is publicly released. Instead, many will come with a Siri overhaul in a future ‌iOS 18‌ update expected to be introduced in 2025.

This doesn’t mean that Siri won’t get any improvements when iOS 18 initially launches. According to BloombergAccording to Mark Gurman, Siri in iOS 18 will still have a few “new bells and whistles” in September, including a new interface that turns on a light around the edge of the screen, richer natural language capabilities that will allow Siri to tell you understand even if you stumble over your words, greater knowledge of Apple products to enable on-device support, and a Type to Siri option to enter queries via text.

But according to Gurman, we’ll have to wait until next year to see Apple’s most significant improvements to Siri. An iOS 18 update in 2025 is expected to bring the following improvements to Apple’s virtual assistant:

• Personal background: Siri will have the ability to tap into your photos, calendar events, messages, and other apps to inform responses to queries. Apple gave the example of a person asking when their mother’s flight would land, which Siri figured out based on recent text conversations and emails.
• Semantic indexing: Apple Intelligence creates an on-device semantic index to store data extracted from your emails, images, websites you visit, and apps you use.
• Application control: ‌Siri will‌ be able to‌ control all individual app features for the first time, expanding the range of functions the personal assistant can perform. ‌Siri‌ will be able to do things like open specific documents, move a note from one folder to another, delete an email, summarize an article, email a web link, and open a particular news site in Apple News.
• Consciousness on screen: With on-screen recognition, Siri will be able to understand and act on user content in more apps over time. For example, if a friend texts a user their new address in Messages, the recipient can say, “Add this address to their contact card.”

Like these Siri improvements, Apple Intelligence features will initially only support US English, with support for additional languages ​​and regions not arriving until 2025.

AI updates coming later in 2024

Gurman notes that some of the Mail app’s new AI features won’t be ready until “later in 2024.” These include a redesign to group emails into categories such as newsletters, announcements and purchases. Swift Assist, a new programming companion for Xcode that uses cloud-based AI models, is also not expected to arrive until later in the year. Siri integration with ChatGPT may also be missing the initial release, although Gurman believes it should be ready later in 2024, based on the language Apple uses in its marketing materials.

Based on past release timelines, these features will likely arrive in an iOS 18.1 or iOS 18.2 update around October or December.

Despite the missing enhancements, the initial version of Apple Intelligence will still offer a host of features, according to Gurman. It will leverage AI to prioritize notifications and provide quick summaries of your alerts and text messages. The software will also have the ability to summarize web pages, voice memos, meeting notes and emails. Additionally, it will introduce new writing tools, image generation, and AI-generated custom emojis called Genmoji.