Apple has teased and promised many features of Apple Intelligence since the AI technology was first introduced earlier this year, but now that iOS 18.1 is available we finally get a taste of Apple’s AI ambitions.
And although the first suite of features is modest in scope, you’re sure to find at least some of them to be helpful. After running the iOS betas with access to Apple Intelligence for several weeks, I think these are the three features you’ll actually use on a day-to-day basis.
You need an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro (or their Plus and Max variants) running iOS 18.1 and, crucially, you must request access to Apple Intelligence to take advantage of these new technologies.
Once you’re in, here’s what you can realistically expect. More features will be added as time goes on — and keep in mind that Apple Intelligence is still officially beta software — but this is where Apple is starting its AI age.
Summaries bring TL;DR to your correspondence
In an era when there are so many demands on our attention and seemingly less time to dig into longer topics…Sorry, what was I saying?
Oh, right: How often have you wanted a “too long; didn’t read” version of not just long emails but the fire hose of communication that blasts your way? The ability to summarize notifications, Mail messages and web pages is perhaps the most pervasive and least intrusive feature of Apple Intelligence so far.
When a notification arrives, such as a text from a friend or group in Messages, the iPhone creates a short, single-sentence summary.
Apple Intelligence summarized two text messages.
Sometimes summaries are vague, and sometimes they’re unintentionally funny, but so far I’ve found them to be more helpful than not. Summaries can also be generated from alerts by third-party apps like news or social media apps — although I suspect that my outdoor security camera is picking up multiple passersby over time and not telling me that 10 people are stacked by the door.
Nobody told me there’s a party at my house.
That said, Apple Intelligence definitely doesn’t understand sarcasm or colloquialisms — you can turn summaries off if you prefer.
You can also generate a longer summary of emails in the Mail app: Tap the Summarize button at the top of a message to view a rundown of the contents in a few dozen words.
In Safari, when viewing a page where the Reader feature is available, tap the Page Menu button in the address bar, tap Show Reader and then tap the Summary button at the top of the page.
Summarize long articles in Safari in the Reader interface.
Siri gets a glow-up and better interaction
I was amused during the iOS 18 and the iPhone 16 releases that the main visual indicator of Apple Intelligence — the full-screen, color-at-the-edges Siri animation — was noticeably missing. Apple even lit up the edges of the massive glass cube of its Apple Fifth Avenue Store in New York City like a Siri search.
Instead, iOS 18 used the same-old Siri sphere.
Now, the modern Siri look has arrived in iOS 18.1, but only on devices that support Apple Intelligence. If you’re still tapping your fingers in the Apple Intelligence waitlist queue, you’ll also see the Siri sphere for now.
Siri under Apple Intelligence looks like a multicolor halo around the edges.
With the new look are a few Siri interaction improvements: It’s more forgiving if you stumble through a query, like saying the wrong word or interrupting yourself mid-thought. It’s also better about listening after delivering results, so you can ask related followup questions.
However, the ability to personalize answers based on what Apple Intelligence knows about you is still down the road. iOS 18.1 also doesn’t yet tie in ChatGPT as an alternate source of information — that interaction has only just rolled out in the iOS 18.2 developer beta.
Remove distractions from your pictures using Clean Up in the Photos app
Until iOS 18.1, the Photos app on the iPhone and iPad has lacked a simple retouch feature. Dust on the camera lens? Litter on the ground? Sorry, you need to deal with those and other distractions in the Photos app on MacOS or using a third-party app.
Now Apple Intelligence includes Clean Up, an AI-enhanced removal tool, in the Photos app. When you edit an image and tap the Clean Up button, the iPhone analyzes the photo and suggests potential items to remove by highlighting them. Tap one or draw a circle around an area — the app erases those areas and uses generative AI to fill in plausible pixels.
Remove distractions in the Photos app using Clean Up.
In this first incarnation, Clean Up isn’t perfect, and you’ll often get better results in other dedicated image editors. But for quickly removing annoyances from photos, it’s fine.
Watch this: Apple Intelligence Impressions: Don’t Expect Radical Change