Here’s When and Where More Apple Intelligence Features Will Arrive
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Alongside today’s release of iOS 18.1 with the first set of Apple Intelligence features, Apple has also quietly updated its roadmap for when and where we can expect the next Apple Intelligence features to arrive.
While we already have a pretty good idea of Apple’s short-term plans, thanks to last week’s release of the first iOS 18.2 developer beta, Apple reiterated in today’s announcement that this won’t see a public release until December.
It also tacitly acknowledged that what we see in the current iOS 18.2 beta is more or less what’s going to be in the final release — just polished up and ready for public consumption. That includes the image creation tools — Image Playground, Genmoji, and the Image Wand — plus ChatGPT integration and support for more English languages.
[In December…] Apple Intelligence will add new ways for users to express themselves visually. Emoji will be taken to an entirely new level with the ability to create original Genmoji by simply typing a description, and can also be personalized using a photo of a friend or family member. Image Playground will allow users to create playful images in moments. Image Wand will make notes more visually engaging by turning rough sketches into delightful images. When a user circles an empty space, Image Wand will create an image using context from the surrounding area.
The iOS 18.2 update will also improve Writing Tools to allow users to “describe a specific change they want to apply to their text, like making a dinner party invite read like a poem, or adding more dynamic action words to a résumé,” and give users “the option to access ChatGPT’s broad world knowledge.”
Apple already announced expanded language support during its September Glowtime event, confirming that Apple Intelligence will gain English language support for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom in December.
Sadly, that’s just for English speakers in those countries; Apple customers in Quebec and other French-speaking parts of Canada will need to wait for Apple to add French, which it originally promised to do in early 2025, along with Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. The good news is that today’s press release gives us a more concrete time window for those languages: April 2025.
In April, a software update will deliver expanded language support, with more coming throughout the year. Chinese, English (India), English (Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese, and other languages will be supported.
However, the bigger surprise is that with that language expansion, Apple has also confirmed that it’s set a date to launch Apple Intelligence in the European Union. Translated from the Apple Newsroom announcement in France:
Mac users in the EU can access Apple Intelligence in English (United States) with macOS Sequoia 15.1. In April, Apple Intelligence features will begin to be rolled out for iPhone and iPad users in the EU. This will include many key Apple Intelligence features, including Writing Tools, Genmoji, a redesigned Siri with richer language understanding, ChatGPT integration, and much more.
While that naturally ties in with the languages Apple plans to add, there was still some uncertainty whether those signified an EU launch since those languages are spoken in countries that are not part of the EU, including Switzerland, Canada, Latin America, and Brazil.
Based on their April 2025 timeframe, the EU release and additional languages will likely arrive in iOS 18.4, hopefully with the last of the promised Apple Intelligence features. Apple hasn’t set a timeline for what’s to come beyond December, apart from saying that the promised significant Siri improvements and Priority Notifications will arrive “in the months to come.”
In the months to come, Priority Notifications will surface what’s most important, and Siri will become even more capable, with the ability to draw on a user’s personal context to deliver intelligence that’s tailored to them. Siri will also gain onscreen awareness, as well as be able to take hundreds of new actions in and across Apple and third-party apps.
While sources such as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman have pegged these for iOS 18.4, the December timeline for the release of iOS 18.2 suggests that some of them could come sooner, since it’s hard to imagine an iOS 18.3 update being devoid of any new Apple Intelligence features.
