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Apple Intelligence: Everything you need to know about Apple’s AI model and services

What is Apple Intelligence?

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When was Apple Intelligence unveiled?

Who gets Apple Intelligence?

How does Apple’s AI work without an internet connection?

Apple Intelligence with third-party apps

Can developers build on Apple’s AI models?

When is Siri getting its next overhaul?

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Apple Intelligence: Everything you need to know about Apple’s AI model and services Brian Heater Amanda Silberling AM PDT · September 9, 2025 If you’ve upgraded to a newer iPhone model recently, you’ve probably noticed that Apple Intelligence is showing up in some of your most-used apps, like Messages, Mail, and Notes. Apple Intelligence (yes, also abbreviated to AI) showed up in Apple’s ecosystem in October 2024, and it’s here to stay as Apple competes with Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others to build the best AI tools.

Cupertino marketing executives have branded Apple Intelligence: “AI for the rest of us.” The platform is designed to leverage the things that generative AI already does well, like text and

The text offering, powered

Apple Intelligence also marks a long-awaited face-lift for Siri. The smart assistant was early to the game, but has mostly been neglected for the past several years. Siri is integrated much more deeply into Apple’s operating systems; for instance, instead of the familiar icon, users will see a glowing light around the edge of their iPhone screen when it’s doing its thing.

More importantly, new Siri works across apps. That means, for example, that you can ask Siri to edit a

Leading up to WWDC 2025, many expected that Apple would introduce us to an even more souped-up version of Siri, but we’re going to have to wait a bit longer.

Techcrunch event Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025 Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before Sept 26 to save up to $668. Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025 Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before Sept 26 to save up to $668. San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025 REGISTER NOW “As we’ve shared, we’re continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal,” said Apple SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi at WWDC 2025. “This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year.”This yet-to-be-released, more personalized version of Siri is supposed to be able to understand “personal context,” like your relationships, communications routine, and more. But according to a Bloomberg report, the in-development version of this new Siri is too error-ridden to ship, hence its delay.

At WWDC 2025, Apple also unveiled a new AI feature called Visual Intelligence, which helps you do an

Visual Intelligence and Live Translation are expected to be available later in 2025, when iOS 26 launches to the public.

After months of speculation, Apple Intelligence took center stage at WWDC 2024. The platform was announced in the wake of a torrent of generative AI news from companies like Google and Open AI, causing concern that the famously tight-lipped tech giant had missed the boat on the latest tech craze.

Contrary to such speculation, however, Apple had a team in place, working on what proved to be a very Apple approach to artificial intelligence. There was still pizzazz amid the demos — Apple always loves to put on a show — but Apple Intelligence is ultimately a very pragmatic take on the category.

Apple Intelligence isn’t a standalone feature. Rather, it’s about integrating into existing offerings. While it is a branding exercise in a very real sense, the large language model (LLM) driven technology will operate behind the scenes. As far as the consumer is concerned, the technology will mostly present itself in the form of new features for existing apps.

We learned more during Apple’s iPhone 16 event in September 2024. During the event, Apple touted a number of AI-powered features coming to its devices, from translation on the Apple Watch Series 10, visual search on iPhones, and a number of tweaks to Siri’s capabilities. The first wave of Apple Intelligence is arriving at the end of October, as part of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1.

The features launched first in U.S. English. Apple later added Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, South African, and U.K. English localizations. Support for Chinese, English (India), English (Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese will arrive in 2025.

The first wave of Apple Intelligence arrived in October 2024 via iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18., and macOS Sequoia 15.1 updates. These updates included integrated writing tools,

These offerings are free to use, so long as you have one of the following pieces of hardware:

Notably, only the Pro versions of the iPhone 15 are getting access, owing to shortcomings on the standard model’s chipset. Presumably, however, the whole iPhone 16 line will be able to run Apple Intelligence when it arrives.

When you ask GPT or Gemini a question, your query is being sent to external servers to generate a response, which requires an internet connection. But Apple has taken a small-model, bespoke approach to training.

The biggest benefit of this approach is that many of these tasks become far less re

That doesn’t apply to everything, however. More complex queries will utilize the new Private Cloud Compute offering. The company now operates remote servers running on Apple Silicon, which it claims allows it to offer the same level of privacy as its consumer devices. Whether an action is being performed locally or via the cloud will be invisible to the user, unless their device is offline, at which point remote queries will toss up an error.

A lot of noise was made about Apple’s pending partnership with OpenAI ahead of the launch of Apple Intelligence. Ultimately, however, it turned out that the deal was less about powering Apple Intelligence and more about offering an alternative platform for those things it’s not really built for. It’s a tacit acknowledgement that building a small-model system has its limitations.

Apple Intelligence is free. So, too, is access to ChatGPT. However, those with paid accounts to the latter will have access to premium features free users don’t, including unlimited queries.

ChatGPT integration, which debuts on iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2, has two primary roles: supplementing Siri’s knowledge base and adding to the existing Writing Tools options.

With the service enabled, certain questions will prompt the new Siri to ask the user to approve its accessing ChatGPT. Recipes and travel planning are examples of questions that may surface the option. Users can also directly prompt Siri to “ask ChatGPT.”

Compose is the other primary ChatGPT feature available through Apple Intelligence. Users can access it in any app that supports the new Writing Tools feature. Compose adds the ability to write content based on a prompt. That joins existing writing tools like Style and Summary.

We know for sure that Apple plans to partner with additional generative AI services. The company all but said that Google Gemini is next on that list.

At WWDC 2025, Apple announced what it calls the Foundation Models framework, which will let developers tap into its AI models while offline.

This makes it more possible for developers to build AI features into their third-party apps that leverage Apple’s existing systems.

“For example, if you’re getting ready for an exam, an app like Kahoot can create a personalized quiz from your notes to make studying more engaging,” Federighi said at WWDC. “And because it happens using on-device models, this happens without cloud API costs […] We couldn’t be more excited about how developers can build on Apple intelligence to bring you new experiences that are smart, available when you’re offline, and that protect your privacy.”

Apple is expected to unveil a new-and-improved Siri experience in 2026, which is already a bit late compared to competitors. It may come as a blow to Apple, but in order to speed up development, they may have no choice but to partner with an outside company to power the new Siri. Apple has been rumored to be in advanced talks with Google, its primary smartphone hardware competitor.

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Brian Heater Brian Heater was the Hardware Editor at TechCrunch until early 2025. He has worked for a number of leading tech publications, including Engadget, PCMag, Laptop, and Tech Times, where he served as the Managing Editor. His writing has appeared in Spin, Wired, Playboy, Entertainment Weekly, The Onion, Boing Boing, Publishers Weekly, The Daily Beast and various other publications. He hosts the weekly Boing Boing interview podcast RiYL, has appeared as a regular NPR

Amanda Silberling Senior

Amanda Silberling is a senior

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