Apple Intelligence Image Playground

Apple Intelligence Features Review: Your iPhone Just Got More Productive & Fun

Many Apple Intelligence features are now officially available for Canadian users once you update your devices to iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 . Along with localized support for Canada, Apple Intelligence also launched in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. Here’s a rundown of the most notable Apple Intelligence features you can now use and my short review of each one.

Clean Up Photos

A photo of me on a beach before using Apple Clean Up
Me on beach by the water in a photo after using Apple Cleanup

Available in Canada since 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.

My Take: I absolutely adore Clean Up. Google Pixel phone owners have been using something similar with Magic Eraser for some time while other phone brands have their own takes on the concept, too. Any time I have used Clean Up on iPhone photos, it has worked flawlessly. I used it for a selfie on the beach to remove several people in the background of the shot, shown here. The photo is pretty seamless minus a remaining shadow from the person who was on the far right. I removed a sewer drain from a photo by a pool and fallen leaves from the ground in a photo of my son. This feature has changed the way I take photos. I no longer worry about waiting for someone to walk by in the background to snap a shot, or about the distracting coffee cup in the background because I know I can remove them later. It’s my favourite new Apple Intelligence feature and the one I use the most.

Natural Language Search in Photos

Natural Language Search in Apple Intelligence

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.

My Take: Theoretically, this feature should make it easier to find images in an expansive photo library. While I’m not keen on some of the new ways Apple has organized photos, in general, the idea is that with this feature, you can just type in a command, even speak one, to find what you want. However, it isn’t quite as smart as I had hoped just yet. I tried simple commands like “find images of me in Japan” and it works well. But other things like asking for images of my son at Christmas, riding a bike, or playing baseball or me and my best friend yielded either no results or results limited to fewer pics than what I know is actually on my phone. What’s more, I found the more I used natural language versus keywords, the less responsive it was. I am sure this feature will get better with time. But it’s not something I’ll be using until it improves.

Memories in Photos

Memory Movie creation in Apple Intelligence

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 supposedly craft a storyline with chapters based on themes and arrange them with a unique narrative.

My Take: I asked it to create a Memory Movie of all my travel this year. I know this begins with Las Vegas where I was in January for CES 2024 and continues on to locations like Turks & Caicos, New York, Palo Alto, CA, Kyoto, Japan, Miami, and The Bahamas. There should be more than enough to create a compelling video. When I first tried this, it kept creating a video called “A Wild Year of Travel” that only included the first month of the year. I tried again with the command “my entire year of travel” but got the same result. I was excited when I tried again weeks later, and the word “year” was highlighted and I was asked to specify a date range. But I got the same result: despite choosing a date range from January 2024 to December 2024, it would only show a few images from January 2024. I also tried “Christine with the ladies on girls’ trips” and it asked me to specify who the “ladies” are after which it once again includes only photos from a single trip in August 2019 versus many other images that contained all four of us.

My hope is that with the next update, Memory Movie will get an overhaul. With that said, I tried other options like “Patrick through the years” and it successfully showed images of my son through the years, albeit arguably not the best photos that could have been used.

Image Playground App

Apple Intelligence 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. This is the Apple Intelligence feature you will have the most fun with. Once you create an image, save it to share in Messages or even apps like Freeform and Keynote.

My Take: When I say this app is addictive, I mean it’s really addictive. I have created and shared images in the likeness of family members and friends, giggling as I choose hilarious expressions or accessories. I have even made a few of myself. It’s a fun app that turns you into a creepily realistic looking animated character, like you’re right out of a Pixar movie. While not all my commands were understood, the app does a pretty good job of interpreting a face from a photo and gives you several options from which to choose so you can find the perfect likeness. You can add headphones or a phone, ask for hair to be longer or for a new shirt or hat until it’s just right. You could easily waste hours playing around with this app.

Genmoji

Four custom Genmoji created of me

Rather than use the emoji characters that Apple provides, you can create your own using simple prompts. Type a description into the keyboard under “Describe an Emoji” and a personalized Genmoji will be created. You can customize a Genmoji with things like hats, sunglasses, 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.

My Take: I love that I can create Genmoji using not only my own image but that of others as well. I have created new Genmoji of myself doing activities like working on a computer or lifting weights. Now, I can easily send that to someone when they are asking why I’m not responding in a group chat to indicate that I’m working (or working out). I also appreciate that the created Genmoji are automatically added to your library so you can conveniently use them again and again with one tap (you can also remove them if you decide you don’t like ones anymore).

You can create Genmoji that are far more expressive than the usual. For my downtime, I also have one of me indulging in a glass of wine, much more fun than a simple wine glass emoji. Keep in mind that the options are limited to ones that will see your face positioned forward. One of me watching TV, for example, includes a TV in the background while my character looks straight ahead. But it’ll do.

Writing Tools

Apple Intelligence Writing Tools

Writing Tools help you compose messages, like 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 so you can review and accept or change. Select text to have it summarized in a single paragraph, bullet points, table, or list as well.

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.

Apple Intelligence Writing Tools

My Take: I find that this feature works well for taking your bare bones ideas and turning them into better-sounding content. For someone who isn’t a writer by trade, it might take you hours to compose the perfect party invitation e-mail, for example. To test this, I started with a few sentences for a fictional holiday party and by the end, with a click and a few words of instruction, I had a festive party invitation that sounded world’s better than my drab original copy. This feature can help with simple e-mails or messages, even to enhance job application cover letters to make sure your tone is fittingly professional.

Siri Upgrades

Apple Intelligence Siri
Screenshot

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. 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 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.  

My Take: Siri glowing around the perimeter of the screen is a nice touch, making the process somehow appear more engaging than the old pulsing orb. The ChatGPT integration (see below for more details) pops up often when I ask a question, like ingredient to sub in for a recipe. You don’t get an audible reply merely a set of relevant links or a short reply with an answer that eventually disappears. It is nice to call up Siri while in an app and that the smart assistant can understand natural language, even if you stumble while speaking. I tried to trip it up a few times with some “ums,” “ahs,” and “uhs,” and it always knew what I was asking, like you’re asking your own personal butler.

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, all leveraging ChatGPT.

My Take: Since I’m using an iPhone 15 Pro, I was not able to try out Visual Intelligence.

Image Wand in Notes

Apple Intelligence Image Wand

When you make 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 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.

Apple Intelligence Image Wand

My Take: While I don’t know that I would use this feature all that much – I think it’s better for iPad than iPhone – it’s a neat option. I tried a few image generations, and they worked well, albeit were quite comical. It was hit and miss for deriving context from written notes. I tried one for a packing list I had for a recent trip and got an image with a toilet because the list had “toiletries,” along with a bra, a bottle of cream, and some papers. That’s quite the combination! However, I created a cool image to represent my top 15 tech products of 2024 list via social channels, and it turned out nicely after a few prompts to get something that resembled what I had in mind. The feature works best when you’re transforming an image you drew yourself into something that looks much nicer, like a map, chart, or graph. And you can even get a little silly with kids’ drawings.

Priority Messages

Apple Intelligence summarize e-mail chain

Already rolled out on compatible 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 identifies 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 record, transcribe, and summarize audio. When a recording is initiated while on a call in the Phone app, participants are automatically notified. Once the call ends, Apple Intelligence generates a summary to help recall key points.

My Take: Priority Messages can be useful though I find that sometimes, the messages flagged as priority aren’t necessarily the most important ones in my inbox. Often, it’s messages from Canada Newswire based on my e-mail subscription to the news service. These are timely press releases, don’t get me wrong. But only one out of every 20 of them is actually important to me.

What I love most about how mail is organized is that you now see a summary of what the message contains in the preview window versus just the first words of the message. For example, for CES prep, I could see when someone was sending me embargoed materials ahead of time, or when the summary indicated “press materials to be sent after embargo lifts.” For another, I didn’t have to open the message to see that the PR rep was still gathering images for me and the e-mail didn’t yet contain them, saving me time.

With another e-mail, I saw a quick reminder to send my invoice and the due date it was needed by, and another even summarized everything a client needed from me in just a few words. It’s a huge timesaver.

I really put the Summarize feature to the test with a message thread that had a total of 68 back and forth messages among multiple people in the chain. It took about 10 seconds to generate a summary, which was pretty spot on.

I tried it with another personal e-mail chain from my cousin inviting everyone in the family to a New Year’s Eve party. There were nine messages in the chain from different family members responding along with the host’s replies. The summary was generated much more quickly and simply advised what the subject of the chain was and noted the individuals who had RSVP’d yes. Frankly, I find the Summary feature more useful than Priority Messages.  

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.

My Take: ChatGPT integration is a nice though for iPhone users since it’s accessible right through Siri. It pops up often when I ask questions. I tried to engage in a conversation, asking about CES 2025 and when it takes place, then when Press Day is, and it was seamless. I was able to continue an ongoing conversation without giving the “Hey Siri” command every time.

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 make hundreds of new actions in and across Apple and third-party apps. Priority Notifications will also more accurately surface what’s most important, something I’m looking forward to. 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. I can’t wait to try it out.

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 nor 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 is available as a free software update with iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2. It 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.