Apple Intelligence is a set of capabilities that will be available with iOS 18 that are powered by AI. These capabilities will only be available on iPhone 15 Pro models from the current lineup, though.
Apple revealed a collection of artificial intelligence elements that will be referred to as Apple Intelligence during its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in 2024. The massive US tech company is set to introduce AI-powered capabilities to gadgets running on chipsets based on the Apple A17 Pro, M1, and later models. This effectively restricts Apple Intelligence to the current iPhone lineup, specifically the iPhone 15 Pro models. Future iPhones will, of course, support AI functions; however, base models from the most recent iPhone 15 series as well as phones from earlier generations will not be supported. Why? Apple representatives clarified:
According to a report by Fonearena, Craig Federighi, Apple’s chief of software engineering, stated at a talk show at the company’s annual developers conference that although the company wants to provide new capabilities to older devices, Apple Intelligence features need particular hardware to work.
The A17 Pro chip, which has a 16-core neural engine, powers the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. The processor area in question is responsible for managing AI tasks. The A17 Pro has a higher processing capacity than the Neural engine on the A16 bionic chip, which powers the standard iPhone 15 models. Federighi added that at least 8GB of RAM is required for all Apple Intelligence-compatible devices, which is another essential component for executing AI activities.
Nevertheless, AI models can be operated on Apple devices from earlier generations. According to John Giannandrea, Apple’s head of machine learning, “you could, in theory, run these models on a very old device, but it would be so slow that it would not be useful” during the talk show. He clarified that inference, which is essentially the process of executing a large language model (LLM), is dependent on both the capacity of the Neural Engine and “a combination of bandwidth in the device” and is “incredibly computationally expensive.”
In response to a question about whether restricting Apple Intelligence to more recent iPhone models is a strategy to increase sales of more expensive and newer iPhone models, Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak refuted the idea, saying that “we would have been smart enough just to do our most recent iPads and Macs too, wouldn’t we?”
