Apple Intelligence Will Reportedly Launch With iOS 18.1 in October

Apple Intelligence, the new set of generative AI features that Apple is developing for recent iPhones, iPads, and Macs reportedly won’t be ready for the initial release of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 in September. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is reporting that the new AI features may launch in October with iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1.

According to Gurman, it will take a couple of months for Apple to make the full collection of generative AI features detailed at its WWDC conference in June available to consumers. iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 will reportedly miss the smarter version of Siri that can take action in and across apps while being aware of a user’s personal context. “The company is planning to roll out its full set of Apple Intelligence features via multiple updates to iOS 18 across the end of 2024 and through the first half of 2025,” Bloomberg reported.

At launch, Apple Intelligence will only be available on last year’s iPhone 15 Pro, the upcoming iPhone 16 family, as well as iPads and Macs with M1 chips or newer. Mac users will need to wait for the release of macOS Sequoia, which is also likely coming in October. Apple Intelligence is also expected to come to the Apple Vision Pro, but the timing isn’t clear yet.

Apple Intelligence is Apple’s attempt to catch up to the generative AI race currently dominated by OpenAI, its cloud partner Microsoft, and Google. The latter is already encouraging developers to leverage its Gemini AI in their Android apps, and Apple will be doing the same with new APIs for integrating Apple Intelligence features such as Writing Tools and Image Playground into third-party apps. According to Mark Gurman, that’s why we may see the first developer betas for iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 come as soon as this week.