Many of Apple Intelligence’s most anticipated features will only arrive after iOS 18’s release, and according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, things like AI-generated images and custom emojis on the iPhone could arrive in December.
Apple Intelligence is expected to arrive with iOS 18.1, which Gurman previously reported would likely arrive in October. Genmoji and an upcoming image-generation tool, Image Playground, will reportedly not be among its initial features. Instead, Gurman predicts they will arrive with iOS 18.2, which he says will arrive in December.
Apple showed off Genmoji and Image Playground during its June event. With Genmoji, users will be able to create custom emojis from prompts or create emojis of real people based on their photos. Image Playground, on the other hand, will let users create images in three styles: animation, illustration, and sketch. It will be offered as a standalone app and as a built-in tool in other apps, including Messages.
All of these features will eventually be available for the iPhone 16 line, which will be unveiled at Apple’s It’s Glorytime event on Monday, September 9, as well as other recent iPhone models. Apple Intelligence will bring ChatGPT integration, message summaries, a smarter Siri, and more.
Apple posted iOS 18 adoption rates on Friday, which are only slightly different from the numbers for iOS 17 a year ago. The company says iOS 18 is installed on 68 percent of all iPhones (as of January 21) and 76 percent of models from the past four years. A year ago, 66 percent of all iPhones ran on iOS 17, so that’s a two percent jump for iOS 18 this year.
The second statistic was similar to today’s data: 76 percent of iPhones from the past four years were running on iOS 17 in January 2024. iPad owners aren’t changing dramatically either.
Apple says 53 percent of all iPads are running on iPadOS 18 (the same as iPadOS 17 a year ago). And 63 percent of tablets from the past four years are running on iPadOS 18. That’s up a notch from the 61 percent of devices from the past four years running on iPadOS 17 early last year.
Does this slight boost come from Apple Intelligence luring in a few extra curious adopters? Unfortunately, the company is keeping mum about how many people have opted in to its suite of generative AI features.
Still, we can guess that Apple wants Apple Intelligence to be adopted: In the latest iOS 18.3 beta, Apple is enabling its AI features by default during onboarding. (You can still opt-out after that, but you’ll have to go into Settings to do so.) In previous versions, this was an opt-in feature that you had to explicitly agree to during setup. This software may arrive as early as next week.