These Apple intelligence features might not come to your iPhone until 2025
Apple Intelligence was the main topic of conversation at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2024, held last week. The Cupertino-based tech giant announced a slew of new artificial intelligence (AI) features and capabilities coming to its operating systems. However, a new report claims that some of these features won’t be ready when iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia launch globally later this year. In fact, some of these features, particularly those related to virtual assistant Siri, could take until 2025 to roll out broadly to users.
Some Apple Intelligence features may be delayed
According to a report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter, Apple doesn’t plan to roll out some AI features until late 2024 and early 2025. The recent release of the first developer beta of the operating system also points in that direction, as it lacks several AI features. Gurman stressed that the tech giant prefers to ship as many new features as possible with the first developer beta, so that developers have enough time to integrate the new experiences into their apps.
If the report is accurate, not only will some features be delayed, but when they do arrive, they will only be available in preview. This means that only a select group of users will get access to the features first, and it will be rolled out slowly to a larger user base.
This new feature rollout strategy will reportedly bring several new benefits to Apple. Gurman claims that this phased approach will allow the company to better manage its resources and not overwhelm its staff or compromise its features. Training the AI in multiple global languages is also a time-consuming challenge, as is building out the Private Cloud Compute cloud infrastructure. The report further highlights that this extra time can be used to address issues with AI hallucinations (chatbots that give nonsense answers).
Finally, as previously reported, Apple is still looking for more third-party AI chatbot makers to integrate into its platform. The company is reportedly in talks with Google for its Gemini AI and Anthropic for Claude AI. In China, where most international AI chatbots are unavailable, the tech giant is reportedly pursuing partnerships with Baidu and Alibaba.
Apple Intelligence features that could be available in late 2024
Notably, the Mail app won’t get some of its AI capabilities until later this year. These features reportedly include the ability to categorize emails into different tabs, such as newsletters, announcements, and shopping. Another feature called Swift Assist, a cloud-based AI programming companion to Xcode, won’t be available until later in the year.
Beyond that, some non-AI features also likely won’t be present when iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia debut this fall. These reportedly include the Mac Virtual Display on Vision Pro, simultaneous live streaming of sports in the Apple TV app, Home app support for controlling vacuum cleaners, and monitoring your home’s electricity usage.
Apple Intelligence features expected to arrive in 2025
Most of Siri’s new AI capabilities won’t be available for users to play with until next year, Gurman said. These reportedly include contextual awareness and natural language responses, semantic indexing for Siri to understand on-device content and personal data, integration with native apps, and computer vision that allows the virtual assistant to read the screen currently open.
Several Apple Intelligence features will still be available with the first general release of the upcoming operating systems, however. These are said to include AI-powered priority notifications, AI summaries of web pages, Voice Memos, meeting notes, and Email, system-wide Writing Tools, image generation, and the custom AI emoji maker Genmoji.
