Apple enhances iOS with AI-driven features in 18.2 update

The much-anticipated Apple Intelligence system, first unveiled at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June, has now taken centre stage. Apple has begun rolling out iOS 18.2, which brings AI features designed to redefine the user experience. Among the highlights are Genmoji, a feature that lets users create custom emojis tailored to any situation; Image Playground, an app enabling the creation of visuals from text descriptions; and the integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT into Siri and Writing Tools.

Taking Apple Intelligence to a wider audience, which was restricted to English US until now, the language expansion now supports localised English for Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K. While support for English (India) along with Chinese, English (Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese will be coming throughout the year, with an initial set arriving in a software update in April, users in India can experience Apple Intelligence by switching the device language to English US.

Image Playground

The latest update introduces Image Playground, a fun and intuitive way to generate unique, customised images. Users can explore themes, costumes, accessories, and settings while adding their own text descriptions. They can even generate images that resemble family members or friends using photos from your library. It also offers two distinct styles: Animation, featuring a modern, 3D-animated look, and Illustration, which delivers clean, simple shapes with bold lines and colour-blocking. Integrated into Messages, Freeform, Keynote, and more, it’s now also available as a standalone app for easy image creation.

Genmoji

For communicating in a more fun and playful manner, Apple Intelligence also powers the Genmoji feature that allows users to generate personalised emojis. By typing a description into the emoji keyboard, users can create custom Genmoji, which can be further personalized with accessories and themes. Genmoji can be based on photos of friends or family and shared inline in messages, or used as stickers and Tapback reactions.

ChatGPT Integration

With this new update, Apple has enabled ChatGPT access in Siri and Writing Tools experiences within iOS allowing users to access its expertise for content generation and image creation directly within apps. With the ChatGPT integration, Siri can suggest a user access ChatGPT for certain requests, and Siri can respond directly.

With Compose, users can also ask ChatGPT to generate content for anything they are writing about from the systemwide Writing Tools. They can also use ChatGPT’s image-generation capabilities to add images alongside their written content.

Users can enable or disable the feature and control data sharing, with no ChatGPT account required for basic use. Additionally, users’ IP addresses are obscured to prevent their sessions from being linked together.

Image Wand

Image Wand is the new tool palette, facilitating image creations within the note using the written or visual context already captured within the note. It transforms a rough sketch into a polished image by simply circling it. Users can also circle empty space in a note, and Image Wand will generate a relevant image based on surrounding text, using on-device AI. Images can be created in Animation, Illustration, or Sketch styles.

Apple is releasing Apple Intelligence in instalments and additional capabilities such as the ability to draw on a user’s personal context tailored for the user, gain onscreen awareness, and will be able to take hundreds of new actions in and across Apple and third-party apps, priority notifications, and more to will be rolled out in the coming months.