Your iPhone’s Hidden AI Arsenal: Features You Didn’t Know Existed

Apple’s generative AI plans have only been shared in recent months. It’s been leaning on artificial intelligence since years before the iPhone.

Few letters have sparked as much discussion in recent years as “AI.” The rise of generative AI, powered by large language models, has left some people excited while causing others to worry about potential disruptions to their lives.

In June, Apple unveiled its plans for generative AI with a framework called Apple Intelligence. However, various forms of AI have been integral to the iPhone for years. Features driven by AI have enhanced core functionalities in popular apps such as Camera, Photos, and Siri, well before ChatGPT captured global attention in 2022.

Several new features under Apple Intelligence focus on productivity, paralleling similar tools introduced by Google and Microsoft over the past year. For instance, Apple Intelligence can assist in rewriting emails in diverse styles and can highlight and summarize important notifications. Additionally, Apple announced capabilities for image generation and creating short videos as part of a suite of new features associated with Apple Intelligence.

“We believe in the transformative power and promise of AI, and we are confident that our unique integration of hardware, software, and services will set us apart in this new era,” said Cook during Apple’s May earnings call.

Apple Intelligence isn’t expected to drop till sometime in the fall, and that too in a limited scope. In the meantime, here are some of our favorite AI-based features on newer iPhones right now.

Apple may not have a chatbot, but it already uses AI in a feature that arrived with iOS 17 last year. Personal Voice is an accessibility setting that uses on-device machine learning to allow people at risk of speech loss to replicate their voice so they can more easily communicate with loved ones. To learn your voice, the iPhone asks you to read out loud 150 phrases. It then uses AI to analyze your voice and generates a synthetic version of it. 

To communicate using this new synthetic voice, you would use the iPhone’s type-to-speak tools to turn text into speech in FaceTime and third-party compatible apps. If you’re interested in learning how to clone and store your voice on your iPhone, here’s a step-by-step guide. 

Live Text is a revolutionary AI feature available on iPhones running iOS 15 or later, introduced in 2021. This computer vision tool recognizes both handwritten and typed text in photos, much like Google Lens. With just a few simple taps, you can easily copy and paste text from images.

Live Text proves to be incredibly useful in everyday life. For instance, if you have a handwritten recipe you want to digitize, simply snap a photo of it with your iPhone and then copy and paste the text into a Word document to create a digital backup. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do this effectively.

Other smartphone manufacturers have also joined the trend. Honor’s Magic 6 Pro and Magic V2, featuring the company’s Magic OS 8 software, have introduced a Magic Text feature with similar capabilities.

With the latest software update, Apple has addressed one of the most common complaints about autocorrect. You can now freely express yourself without Apple altering your chosen curse words to something milder, like “duck” or “shut.”

In addition to allowing you to curse with ease, autocorrect has improved its overall functionality. It now corrects mistakes more accurately and offers more personalized inline predictive text. Much of this advancement is attributed to iOS 17’s new transformer language model, which utilizes machine learning for word prediction, according to Apple. This model has been trained on vast amounts of data, enabling it to understand context and patterns to deliver enhanced results that closely mimic human communication.

It’s no secret that the iPhone relies on advanced algorithms as well as computational photography for a large chunk of its camera features. Portrait Mode, which uses AI to identify subjects and create a bokeh effect, is just one example. Another is Cinematic Mode, which uses AI to simulate the desired aperture and dynamically adjusts focus to keep your moving subject sharp. 

One of the newer AI-powered capabilities, courtesy of iOS 17, is the Photo app’s ability to identify pets in a photo, which allows for better photo organization.