iPhone 15 Pro Visual Intelligence imminent; Gemini in Apple Intelligence possible?
With the launch of the iPhone 16e, Apple proved that they can use the Action Button to access the Visual Intelligence feature. As Visual Intelligence is the only Apple Intelligence feature missing from the iPhone 15 Pro series, you can say that I am somewhat miffed by its fake exclusivity for the iPhone 16 series. But hey, it appears that it will be coming soon to iPhone 15 Pros too!
Visual Intelligence on iPhone 15 Pro coming via a future iOS update
I guess Apple wanted to offer Visual Intelligence only on the iPhone 16 series for just a bit longer, but it will apparently be coming to the iPhone 15 Pro soon. This is surprisingly nice of Apple, seeing that they can easily mention the exclusivity due to the A17 Pro chips’ Neural Engine not being fast enough for Visual Intelligence — which isn’t true given that the A17 Pro, A18 and A18 Pro have 35 TOPS NPU.
This has been confirmed by an Apple rep to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. In any case, the stable release of iOS 18.4 is expected to roll out in April. So, we have quite some time between now and the actual release of Visual Intelligence, during which Apple might just change their mind and keep Visual Intelligence exclusive to the iPhone 16 series.
Apple Intelligence to adopt Gemini alongside ChatGPT
The current iteration of Apple Intelligence sees Apple work with OpenAI to use ChatGPT for Siri requests, but Google’s Gemini may be next to be integrated into Apple Intelligence. It may not be arriving anytime soon, but code referring to it has apparently popped up in the iOS 18.4 beta. In its current state, Apple is relying on ChatGPT to do some of the heavier lifting, as they are working on a new AI model for Siri that’s set to arrive with iOS 19.
Personally, both ChatGPT and Gemini has their own perks and quirks, and I think it would be great to allow users to choose which LLM they prefer to assist them with their queries. Personally I prefer Gemini, as its access to the Internet even in its free version means that I get much more updated information than I would with ChatGPT’s older training data.
