Apple Intelligence is here, but only in developer beta for now
Apple’s big push for generative AI in its various operating systems has begun and Apple has finally opened its doors Apple Intelligence for some public testing — but only in the form of a developer beta for now. Some of Apple’s promised AI-powered writing tools, Siri enhancements, and requests tied to a photo library are here in Apple’s latest developer beta of iOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1, which arrives today but won’t be released for the available public beta Not yet. That said, expect a lot of people to start playing with it soon, including CNET.
Apple Intelligence is expected to arrive this fall for a subset of iPhones, iPads, and Macs with the necessary chipsets as part of iOS 18, and even then it will debut as a beta feature that you can opt into. But Apple Intelligence is currently a beta within a beta: It’s part of the developer beta of iOS 18.1 (and macOS Sequoia 15.1), while the public beta available now on iPhones, Macs, and iPads is still based on iOS 18.0 and macOS Sequoia 15.0.
Apple isn’t rolling out all of its promised AI-powered upgrades at once. The developer beta of Apple Intelligence will bring AI-suggested writing tools that appear within documents or emails, and a number of Siri changes, including a new voice designed to sound more natural, more contextual conversations, a new glowing border around the screen when Siri is active, and a double-tap gesture at the bottom of the screen to type to Siri. There’s also instant movie memory request in Photos, and AI summaries in Messages, Mail, Notifications, and Notes. But ChatGPT hook-ins, Apple’s GenMoji and Image Playground features and other Siri functions are not yet on board.
Look at this: Apple Intelligence: What You Need to Know About Apple’s Next Generation AI
The developer beta will have a settings feature that lets you opt in to Apple Intelligence features for testing, a process that Apple says could take hours to approve. It’s not yet known whether Apple’s public release of the Apple Intelligence beta arriving later this year will have a similar opt-in process.
While some of Apple’s AI features sound really useful, their limited rollout has been limited to just certain iPhones, iPads and Macs later this year (iPhone 15 Pro models or later, and Macs and iPads with M-series chips) means it won’t be used by everyone. We’ll hopefully start to understand what those features can actually do.
