When will Apple Intelligence arrive? Major iPhone AI update release date remains mysterious

Apple showed off new features during its big event last month – but they might not even arrive with the new iPhone

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Apple is planning a huge new update for the iPhone and its other products – but it is still not clear exactly when it will arrive.

Last month, Apple held its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote and introduced a range of features under the banner “Apple Intelligence”. They include an improved version of Siri and generative AI features that can create custom emoji.

It also showed off more standard updates to iOS 18, such as the option to personalise the home screen and the biggest ever redesign for the Photos app.

Those features have since arrived with the developer and now public beta of iOS 18. As such, anyone can download an early version of that software.

But those beta versions do not include Apple Intelligence, despite it being the landmark feature of that WWDC event. The same is true for other platforms, such as the Mac.

Now rumours suggest that those AI features will not arrive until iOS 18.1, potentially in October. That would mean they are not available for the launch of the new iPhone, which usually happens alongside the launch of the new version of iOS in September.

That is according to reporters including Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who did suggest that some of those features would arrive in a beta version of iOS 18.1 that could be released as soon as next week.

Apple said when it launched its AI features that they would be available “in beta” in US English later this year, and its website still has that deadline. It does however note that “some features, additional languages and platforms will be coming over the course of the next year”.

It did not say which of those features would come later, or when they will arrive.

At the time, rumours suggested that some of the new features were built as part of an urgent effort to ensure that AI did not appear behind the state of the art on AI. As such, some may not yet be ready.