Apple Intelligence

Apple Intelligence is Officially Available in Canada

Many Apple Intelligence features are now officially available for Canadian users with the iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 updates. Along with localized support for Canada, Apple Intelligence is also launching in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. Here’s a rundown of some of the Apple Intelligence features you can use.

Clean Up Photos

Apple Intelligence CleanUp

Available for some time now via an earlier Apple Intelligence update, Clean Up allows you to easily remove distracting objects and elements from photos. Tap the Clean Up button in the photo editing menu and it will intelligently select and illuminate items suggested for removal, like a person walking by in the background of the photo or an object on the ground.

Natural Language Search in Photos

You can more easily search for images in your library by simply describing them. Ask for photos of “Patrick riding a bicycle,” for example, to call up relevant photos depicting this. You can use this for videos as well, searching for even a specific moment from a video to fast forward right to it.

Memories in Photos

You can use simple commands to create engaging movies of your photos. The phone uses language and image understanding to devise something fitting, selecting the best photos and videos based on your description. It will craft a storyline with chapters based on themes and arrange them with a unique narrative.

Image Playground App

Apple Image Playground

In this new app, you can add a simple text description to instantly generate an image. You can create images in the likeness of friends and family members using photos in your library. You can select themes, objects, and styles like animated or illustration and let your creativity run wild. Apple users will probably have a ton of fun with this feature. Once you create an image, you can save it to share in Messages or even apps like Freeform and Keynote.

Genmoji

Genmoji

Rather than use the emoji characters that Apple provides, you can create your own using simple prompts. Type a description into the keyboard and a personalized Genmoji will be created. You can customize a Genmoji with things like hats, sunglasses, add items, and more. Add Genmoji in-line to messages and share them as stickers, reactions, or a Tapback. Once you create one, it is automatically added to your library.

Writing Tools

Writing Tools

Writing Tools helps you compose messages, whether you want to change the tone of a message from friendly to professional, improve how it sounds, correct grammar, spelling, sentence structure, or even have something written entirely for you. You can proofread or summarize text in virtually any app, including Mail, Messages, Notes, Pages, and third-party apps. You’ll get an explanation of the edits made that you can review and accept or change. You can also select text to have it summarized in a single paragraph, bullet points, table, or list.

There’s also an option to describe your change using natural language. You might want to make a party invitation sound more exciting, for example, or change a message to read like a poem.

Siri Upgrades

Along with illuminating around the perimeter of the phone versus appearing in a pulsing orb at the bottom, Siri is now also integrated with ChatGPT, leveraging the intelligent assistant when needed for certain inquiries. This happens seamlessly, without you needing to switch between apps. On Mac, you can place Siri anywhere on the desktop to access it easily as you work.

Siri is overall more deeply integrated into the system experience. You can type to Siri at any time on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and switch fluidly between text and voice. With richer language-understanding capabilities, Siri can follow along even when you stumble over words, and maintain context from one request to the next. In addition, with extensive product knowledge, Siri can now answer thousands of questions about the features and settings of Apple products so you can learn how to do everything from take a screen recording to share a Wi-Fi password.  

Visual Intelligence

Visual Intelligence

Exclusive to owners of the iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro, visual intelligence works with the new Camera Control button. Press it to learn more about something you see around you, like a sign or photo of a piece of clothing in a magazine. You can also snap a photo of something like a brochure to get a summary of the information. Additionally, Visual Intelligence can be used to translate text, detect phone numbers and e-mail addresses to instantly add them to contacts, and search Google to see where you can buy an item or get more information about something, leveraging ChatGPT.

Image Wand in Notes

Image Wand

A very cool feature, when you’re making notes in the Notes app, you can freehand draw something than select the Image Wand option in the tool palette and circle it to have it instantly transform into a polished image. What’s more, you can even just circle in a blank spot in your note and the phone will intelligently derive context from your written notes to come up with a fitting pic. This feature uses on-device generative models to analyze the content and make it more visual. You can create images in various styles, including animation and illustration.

Priority Messages

Already rolled out on devices, Priority Messages is a new section at the top of the inbox in Mail that shows the most urgent e-mails, like a same-day invitation to lunch or a boarding pass. You can also see summaries of e-mails without needing to open a message. For long threads, tap or click Summarize to view pertinent details. Additionally, Smart Reply provides suggestions for a quick response and will identify questions in an e-mail to ensure everything is answered.

Notification summaries allow you to scan long or stacked notifications with key details right on the Lock Screen, like when a group chat is particularly active. A new Focus, Reduce Interruptions, surfaces only the notifications that might need immediate attention. 

In the Notes and Phone apps, you can now record, transcribe, and summarize audio. When a recording is initiated while on a call in the Phone app, participants are automatically notified, and once the call ends, Apple Intelligence generates a summary to help recall key points.

ChatGPT Integration

Apple Intelligence ChatGPT

ChatGPT integration can be found across the board with features like Siri, which can suggest that you access ChatGPT for certain requests it can’t answer. You’ll still get the response, however, right through Siri. You can also use Siri within Writing Tools for assistance or even to add generated images, all without having to jump between applications. You can choose if you want to enable ChatGPT or not and if you use it without an account, Open AI will not store requests nor use the data for model training. Your IP address is obscured to prevent sessions from being linked.

More Capabilities Coming Soon

This isn’t it. More Apple Intelligence features will be coming over the next few months to make Siri more intelligent, drawing on personal context. Siri will also gain onscreen awareness, and will be able to take hundreds of new actions in and across Apple and third-party apps. Priority Notifications will also surface what’s most important. In addition, you’ll be able to create images in Image Playground in a Sketch style, an academic and highly detailed style that uses a vibrant colour palette combined with technical lines to produce realistic drawings.

A Note About Privacy

It’s worth noting that Apple Intelligence uses on-device processing so many of the models that power it run entirely on your local device. For requests that require access to larger models, Private Cloud Compute extends the privacy and security of iPhone into the cloud. When using Private Cloud Compute, your data is never stored or shared with Apple; it is used only to fulfill your requests. Independent experts can inspect the code that runs on Apple silicon servers to continuously verify this privacy promise and are already doing so.

Availability

Apple Intelligence

Apple Intelligence is available now as a free software update with iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2, and can be accessed in most regions around the world when the device and Siri language are set to localized English for Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the U.K., or the U.S.

Apple Intelligence is available on iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPad with A17 Pro or M1 and later, and Mac with M1 and later.

Stay tuned for my Apple Intelligence feature review coming soon!