Apple Intelligence will probably not go live when the new iPhones launch this September.
This is according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who claims that Apple now plans to launch its AI features as software updates "by October," citing people with knowledge of the matter. The reason is what you might expect: Apple needs more time to fix bugs and make sure that it has support from third party developers.
Apple announced its AI features in June, during WWDC, saying they're "deeply integrated" into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. But pretty much all of the new features, which include a smarter Siri, an AI-powered text editing feature called Rewrite, and AI-generated images called Genmoji, were missing when the iOS 18 and other new operating systems launched as beta in July.
To be fair, Apple never specifically said it would release AI in September; the company said Apple Intelligence was coming in beta this fall, with some features coming "over the course of the next year." Still, reports said that the company planned to make at least some of the features available alongside the launch of new iPhones, which typically happens in the first half of September.
The way it looks right now, Apple will launch iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia in September, and then introduce the AI features with a later update. Similarly, it's possible that the first iPhone 16 models will lack the AI features when they start shipping to consumers.
The report does claims that Apple will make Apple Intelligence available in its developer betas, namely iOS 18.1, and iPadOS 18.1, as soon as this week.
While all this is unofficial and yet to be confirmed, there's a very real and official delay to Apple's AI features in Europe. In June, the company said it will not launch Apple Intelligence in Europe (likely until 2025) due to regulatory concerns.
