iPhone 16 launch leaves one big question: When will Apple Intelligence be shipped?

However, a question that is on everyone’s mind is: Will all of the widely-touted Apple Intelligence features be shipped to users soon? The answer may not only depend on which iPhone you own but also which country you live in.

First, what is Apple’s AI play?

Essentially, the tech giant’s AI pitch is that Apple Intelligence will be based on the user. It will tap into the user’s personal context in order to help them in unique ways. Apple also has a strategy in place to make all of this secure and private. While most of the AI processing will happen locally on-device, Apple will rely on its silicon servers known as private cloud compute models to process more sophisticated AI requests.

Apple claims that the data centres housing these private cloud compute models run on 100 per cent renewable energy as part of its 2030 commitment to be carbon neutral across the company’s entire footprint.

With Apple Intelligence, users can ask AI to proofread and rewrite text in specific tones such as ‘friendly’ or ‘formal’. They can prompt Apple Intelligence to create customised emojis, generate original AI images, fish out specific photos from Photo Gallery, stitch together video stories, summarise emails and notifications, etc.

Siri will also be upgraded with Apple Intelligence so that users can better navigate their devices and even ask the voice assistant to take actions directly within apps.

While most of these AI features were already announced at the company’s annual developer conference held earlier this year, they were reintroduced for iPhone users on Monday with one fancy new addition: iPhone 16 models will come with visual intelligence. This means that users who want to know the name of a restaurant or the breed of a dog just need to point and click. They can also, for instance, take a photo of a mathematics problem in their notebook and ask ChatGPT to solve it.

Based on Monday’s launch event, it is clear that the smartphone brand is betting big on Apple Intelligence to be a key driver of iPhone sales. Perhaps with this intention, Apple is diverging from its usual practice of letting users with even two to three-year-old Apple devices experience the latest software capabilities.

Who will and won’t get Apple Intelligence?

A selection of Apple Intelligence features will be accessible with the iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1 software updates that are expected to be publicly released at some point in October 2024.

The batch of Apple Intelligence features releasing next month will include writing tools, AI-generated summaries of mails and notifications, an AI upgraded Siri, and the Clean Up tool in Photos. A few more Apple Intelligence features will only be released in the US.

Apple Intelligence will only be available in the English language this year. It will have additional language support in Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish in 2025.

The new iPhone 16 models are not likely to come with all the Apple Intelligence features pre-loaded on the device, meaning that iPhone 16 owners will also have to download a separate iOS update to get Apple Intelligence.

Furthermore, Apple Intelligence will only be coming to the existing iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Owners of an iPhone 15 or an iPhone 15 Plus will miss out on the generative AI upgrades.

Why is Apple staggering its AI features?

Apple’s phased rollout of its flagship AI offering could potentially have something to do with its regulatory woes in regions like the European Union (EU). A month after WWDC 2024, the company said that it would be deferring the rollout of Apple Intelligence in the EU due to regulatory uncertainties.

The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) looks to curb the dominance of big tech companies and has been in effect since 2022. But, Apple has argued that provisions of the competition law, such as its interoperability requirements, “could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security.”

“We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety,” the iPhone-maker had said.

Besides the EU, Chinese users will also have to wait to access Apple Intelligence features subject to regulatory approval. The country’s stringent regulations require companies to obtain approval before deploying commercial AI models. Developers of generative AI models are also responsible for taking down “illegal” content, according to a report by CNBC. 

Furthermore, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is banned in China which is a problem for Apple as the chatbot will be integrated with Siri on its devices. As an alternative, Apple could ink a deal with domestic companies such as Baidu or Alibaba that have their own Large Language Models (LLMs) and voice assistants.

Apple also seems to be losing its foothold in the crucial Chinese market with reports stating that the iPhone-maker failed to rank among the top five smartphone vendors in the country over the year’s second quarter, and it faces pressure from rivals such as Huawei.