Apple Intelligence released public betas of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1 on Thursday, taking another big step toward mainstream adoption.
Starting Thursday, people who sign up for Apple's public beta program will be able to experience the generative AI-powered platform the company has been touting since June.
At the moment, Apple Intelligence is only available in US English. The feature is also unavailable indefinitely in both the EU and the People's Republic of China due to regulatory issues. In the US, you can access the feature on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and the newly announced iPhone 16 series.
TechCrunch has been thoroughly testing the developer beta of iOS 18.1 as part of our iPhone 16 Pro Max review, with several standout features including cross-system lighting tools, photo cleanup, and the biggest Siri improvements since launch.
The writing tool leverages generative AI capabilities that will be familiar to anyone who has actually used ChatGPT or similar tools. In addition to proofreading and summarizing, the system rewrites text in a variety of styles, including professional, concise, and friendly. For emails, users can take advantage of smart reply features, message prioritization, and summarization.
Siri has undergone a major overhaul in the way the smart assistant appears on screen. Gone is the colorful Siri icon at the bottom of the screen, replaced with a glowing border that doesn't obscure text. Siri is also now better at understanding when you stumble over words, and can type for you if you can't speak to the assistant.
The final major feature for Siri being released on Thursday is Product Knowledge, which lets you ask the Assistant how to perform a variety of on-device tasks, from recording your screen to resetting your AirTags. Features like conversation and app context and visual intelligence are still in development.
The most interesting addition to the Photos app is Clean Up, Apple's answer to Google Magic Eraser: surround an object with your finger and it will remove it by generating a background over it. The in-app search feature has been improved to accommodate more natural language queries, and users can now generate Memories from a text prompt.
Users will need to manually enable the feature by going to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri > Join the Apple Intelligence Waitlist. Meanwhile, to join the public beta program, simply visit beta.apple.com.
Additional Apple Intelligence features will be released later this year.