The Apple Watch Could Be ‘Powered by Apple Intelligence’ in watchOS 12
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Earlier this month, we heard a somewhat dubious rumor that Apple plans to give the Apple Watch a fresh coat of paint in watchOS 12 and possibly even welcome it into the Apple Intelligence family. While a redesign isn’t entirely out of the question, we’re more skeptical that Apple will pack full AI capabilities into its wearable. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t enjoy at least some of the benefits of Apple Intelligence.
Technically, even watchOS 11 has some Apple Intelligence capabilities since much of what you see on your wrist comes from your iPhone. For example, notifications are summarized on the Apple Watch the same way as on the iPhone, and the Reduce Interruptions Focus Mode will also apply to any notifications sent to your watch. Further, while the Apple Watch definitely can’t make its own Genmoji, the watchOS Messages app can access and send any recently created ones from the Stickers section.
Nevertheless, there are indications that Apple wants to take that a step further this year. There’s little hope of the Apple Watch Series 11 getting enough processing power and RAM to run AI models directly — that would require a pretty big boost from the S10 and 1 GB of RAM found on current models to an A18-level Neural Engine and 8 GB of RAM. However, there’s no reason that it couldn’t leverage more of the iPhone’s Apple Intelligence capabilities.
Mark Gurman recently shared that he’s been reliably informed that Apple plans to brand this year’s Apple Watch as “powered by Apple Intelligence.” He doesn’t offer any insights into what features we can expect, although it’s a safe bet that health features will be a big part of this play.
In late March, Gurman revealed “Project Mulberry,” a new AI-powered health initiative that Apple has been working on for several years. In addition to catching up with rivals like Samsung and Google, which have been applying AI in recent products like the Pixel Watch and Galaxy Watch to help users get a better understanding of their health metrics, the new project would include an AI agent that could “replicate — at least to some extent — a real doctor,” Gurman says.
Apple has been studying ways to improve its Health app for years. Analysts believe the company has been working on a “Health+” service since at least 2021. Two years ago, Gurman revealed “Project Quartz,” which was Apple’s first attempt to expand into AI-based health coaching. However, it’s since become even more focused on artificial intelligence.
For instance, Project Quartz aimed to focus primarily on encouraging a healthy lifestyle through coaching on exercise, diet, and sleep habits by analyzing basic physiological metrics like heart rate and sleep cycles, which could in turn suggest new cardio routines or improvements to your bedtime schedule.
On the other hand, Project Mulberry would feature an AI agent that could even enter the realm of being a chatbot. It would also expand beyond basic metrics like sleep and heart rate into looking at nutrition, physical therapy, mental health, and more.
This wouldn’t be an Apple Watch-exclusive feature, of course. If anything, most of it would live in the iPhone’s Health app. However, the Apple Watch is a key component of Apple’s health and wellness experience, so it’s hard to imagine not expanding some of those AI capabilities to the wrist, even if it’s just a different way of viewing the data analyzed by the iPhone.
While Apple is almost certain to lead with AI health features, there are other ways in which Apple Intelligence could expand to the Apple Watch. For instance, we could see something like basic Genmoji creation being available in the watchOS Messages app, allowing folks to dictate a Genmoji and then handing the task off to the iPhone to do the image generation. The Siri improvements coming in iOS 19 could also be extended to the Apple Watch, with the iPhone once again doing the heavy lifting.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
