Users of the iPhone 15 and later in the UK can now experience Apple Intelligence, after the release of iOS 18.2
Apple has released iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 – bringing Apple Intelligence across the pond to the United Kingdom and a number of other countries.
Apple announced the OS updates on Wednesday, which provides Apple Intelligence for the iPhone (iPhone 15 and later), iPad and Mac, after the firm began offering the service to American users in October, following the release of the iPhone 16 range in September.
‘Apple Intelligence’ is the tech giant’s name for its AI move announced in June, that brings OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot integration to iPads, iPhones, Vision Pro headsets and Macs.
Apple Intelligence
“With today’s software updates, Apple Intelligence begins language expansion with localised English support for the UK, in addition to Australia and New Zealand and Canada and brings a brand-new set of capabilities that elevate users’ experience with iPhone, iPad, and Mac,” said Apple on Wednesday.
Amid a somewhat lukewarm response by reviewers to Apple Intelligence, Apple said that users can now remove distracting objects from images with Clean Up, explore creative new ways to express themselves visually with Image Playground, create the perfect emoji for any situation with Genmoji, and make their writing even more dynamic with Writing Tools.
And users with an iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro can now instantly learn more about their surroundings with visual intelligence with Camera Control, Apple noted.
The Photos app has new capabilities with a natural language search. For example, it can be asked “find a photo of Maya skateboarding in a blue shirt.”
Meanwhile Image Wand allows users to remove objects or flaws from photographs.
Siri and ChatGPT
However what is perhaps most newsworthy about the new versions of its iPhone, iPad and Mac software, is that it includes a long-awaited ChatGPT integration with the Siri personal assistant, that doesn’t require an OpenAI account.
Siri had been launched as a standalone iOS product February 2010, but was integrated into the iPhone 4s smartphone, when it was released back in October 2011.
For years Siri was viewed unfavourable in comparison to Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant.
But ever since Apple’s June announcement of its partnership with OpenAI ChatGPT, there has optimism of a Siri makeover, which has now taken place.
The ChatGPT integration is typically activated now when users ask Siri complicated questions.
For example, when Siri is asked a question that Apple identities as better suited for ChatGPT, it asks the user permission to access the OpenAI service.
“With the power of Apple Intelligence, Siri becomes more natural, flexible, and deeply integrated into the system experience,” said Apple. “A brand-new design with an elegant glowing light wraps around the edge of the screen when active on iPhone, iPad, or CarPlay.”
“On Mac, users can place Siri anywhere on their desktop to access it easily as they work,” it said. “Users can type to Siri at any time on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and can switch fluidly between text and voice as they use Siri to accelerate everyday tasks.”
“With richer language-understanding capabilities, Siri can follow along when users stumble over their words, and maintain context from one request to the next,” Apple said. “In addition, with extensive product knowledge, Siri can now answer thousands of questions about the features and settings of Apple products. Users can learn everything from how to take a screen recording, to how to easily share a Wi-Fi password.”
Privacy focus
Apple said that Apple Intelligence is designed to protect users’ privacy at every step, as it uses on-device processing, meaning that many of the models that power it run entirely on device.
For requests that require access to larger models, Apple said that Private Cloud Compute extends the privacy and security of iPhone into the cloud to unlock even more intelligence.
“When using Private Cloud Compute, users’ data is never stored or shared with Apple; it is used only to fulfill their request,” said Apple. “Independent experts can inspect the code that runs on Apple silicon servers to continuously verify this privacy promise, and are already doing so. This is an extraordinary step forward for privacy in AI.”
