Tim Cook Highlights Apple Intelligence’s Fastest-Growing Feature

Tim Cook just gave Apple watchers their clearest clue yet about which Apple Intelligence feature is capturing the most attention.

During Apple’s Q1 earnings call, the Apple CEO called out Visual Intelligence as one of Apple Intelligence’s most popular features. Citing transcripts from the call, 9to5Mac reported that he said, “During the quarter, we were excited to see that the majority of users on enabled iPhones are actively leveraging the power of Apple Intelligence.”

Cook further stated, “One of our most popular features is Visual Intelligence, which helps users learn and do more than ever with the content on their iPhone screen, making it faster to search, take action, and answer questions across their apps.”

As Cook highlighted Apple’s financial growth during the first quarter of its 2026 fiscal year, he touted Apple Intelligence as a major frontier that will shape how the company will embed AI in its products.

What is Apple Intelligence, and why does Visual Intelligence matter

Introduced in 2024, Apple Intelligence is Apple’s own AI platform. It merges the power of generative AI with on-device context to deliver robust assistance across different Apple products. Unlike Siri, Apple Intelligence offers smarter, broader functionalities. Because it’s only available on newer Apple models, growing interest in it, especially its Visual Intelligence, will inadvertently boost Apple’s revenue.

Apple Intelligence enables users on supported devices to perform a range of functions, from writing to interpreting screen content, ultimately improving productivity and the user experience. 

Beyond helping users with screen content, Visual Intelligence stands out for providing real-time environmental context. For instance, you can focus your camera on a landmark, and it will pull out information about that place. The integration of ChatGPT into the AI platform allows users to ask follow-up questions about what the camera is pointed at.

These capabilities are activated via specific controls on the device. Access to Visual Intelligence depends on the Apple product used. iPhones with dedicated camera controls activate it using that same control feature, as reported by PhoneArena. Users without camera control can assign camera activation to an Action Button or use a control panel shortcut.

It runs many of its functions on-device; as a result, it requires advanced hardware only available on Apple devices powered by any of the following chips:

• A17 Pro
• A18 
• A18 Pro
• A19
• A19 Pro
• M1 and later
• M2 Ultra
• M2 and later

Playing catch-up: Android’s head start and Siri’s coming upgrade

It’s not surprising that Visual Intelligence is a big deal for the Apple community. Android already has a similar feature: the integration of Google Lens technology into Gemini Assistant. As a result, competition remains fierce to dominate the AI assistant market.

Their current challenge stems from Siri’s continued limitations in overall intelligence. It performs well on traditional tasks such as dialing a number or turning on a flashlight, but struggles with nuanced tasks. 

Apple has, however, shown signs of upgrading and embedding it with AI, with a revised version expected to launch with iOS 26.4, according to PhoneArena.

Also read: Apple’s Q.ai acquisition shows how its AI strategy is getting more hardware-focused.

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