Apple Intelligence: More of a Concept than a Reality

In the past few years, everyone has been talking about generative artificial intelligence (AI). Not only that, but everyone is also doing something with generative AI. At the WWDC 2024 conference in June, Apple announced Apple Intelligence. However, so far, Apple Intelligence remains more of a concept than a reality.

Review of Apple Intelligence

By now, you may already have some understanding of Apple Intelligence. It is a series of AI-based tools launched by Apple. It includes writing tools for proofreading and rewriting text, summaries for articles, emails, and notifications, Genmoji, and even an application for generating illustrations.

Apple also promised to launch a new Siri supported by Apple Intelligence. This Siri is expected to be smarter, more natural, faster, and more reliable. The company also demonstrated how the new Siri will integrate deeply with applications, allowing users to ask the assistant to apply filters to specific photos.

However, after the WWDC keynote, Apple Intelligence still remains just a concept.

Limited Preview

The first beta version of iOS 18 did not include any Apple Intelligence features, and Apple has remained silent about when these features will be available. A few weeks ago, the company confirmed that Apple Intelligence would not be ready for the September release of iOS 18.0. Therefore, Apple released a new beta version of iOS 18.1 with Apple Intelligence, but with some limitations.

Some limitations were expected. In June, Apple stated that Apple Intelligence would initially be available only in the United States English region (which is somewhat frustrating, but will be mentioned later). However, when the beta version was made available to developers, almost none of the features announced in June were working properly in the current beta version.

Currently, if you are running the iOS 18.1 beta version with Apple Intelligence, all you can do is rewrite text and summarize articles or notifications. The Photos app has undergone some improvements, Siri has new animations, and better understanding of contextual requests.

But the grand promises of Apple Intelligence are still just promises. We still cannot try features such as Genmoji, Image Playgrounds, object removal from photos, the new Siri with generative AI, or ChatGPT integration. We only know that these features will be launched within the "next year".

Apple Intelligence Will Struggle to Catch Up with Competitors

What we are discussing is beta software. But the problem is that Apple is already behind its competitors, and it is falling behind too far in this regard. OpenAI's performance on ChatGPT is impressive (Apple itself acknowledges this). Google has also announced some very cool new features for its Gemini AI assistant, which are being rolled out to users starting today.

These competitors are constantly releasing new features, while Apple seems to still be struggling to launch things that other industries have been doing for at least a year.

Samsung and Google's generative AI have already been deployed in many countries and regions. Apple Intelligence is expected to be launched outside the United States only next year.

Although Apple Intelligence will partially open to users by the end of this year, by then, competitors will have more features and support for more languages. This fully illustrates Apple's situation in recent years.

Some may say that Apple has waited so long to do better or to do it right. While things like Apple's Private Cloud Compute are indeed impressive, as end users, we feel that Apple Intelligence is not doing things that other AI can already do. And I don't think there is any improvement in the tools we currently have.

Of course, everyone hopes to see Apple Intelligence improve and support more languages as soon as possible. However, given Apple's recent handling, the short-term prospects for Apple Intelligence seem less optimistic.