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Updated June 2: The article was originally published on June 1

Apple will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference next week, where it will unveil several AI-based tools that will power the iPhone 16 family when the phones go on sale in September. Many of these tools will be available on older iPhones, but only the iPhone 15 Pro will make full use of them.

Update: Sunday, June 2: Writing for Bloomberg’s Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman brings up a troubling detail about Apple’s push to integrate AI with the iPhone 16 family and iOS 18. It won’t be ready for the new iPhone’s launch in September.

“Although Apple plans to release several AI features this fall with iOS 18, Siri’s enhanced capabilities won’t arrive until sometime next year. Still, they give a good idea of ​​how broadly Apple is thinking about AI — and how deeply it hopes to integrate the technology into its products.”

While it gives us a glimpse into Apple’s thinking on the matter, even January’s generous launch of the new AI features will see the iPhone take the main stakes at the table of what consumers see as AI some 15 months after Google debuted them on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, 12 months after Samsung debuted its system on the Galaxy S24, 24+ and S24 Ultra, and almost a year after the wave of Android AI smartphones launched at CES 2024.

There is every chance that Google, Samsung, OnePlus, Honor and other manufacturers will be on their second generation of first AI smartphones before Apple can deliver its first generation. This assumes you have a phone that will support the new software; only the current iPhone 15 Pro will be able to use the full set of AI tools.

The likely cause is the A17 Pro chipset in the Pro models. This is Apple’s latest Axx mobile chipset, and it’s notable that Apple underpowered the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus models by using the then-current A16 chipset. The extra power of the A17 Pro’s Neural engine, along with faster CPU and GPU cores, will be needed to run the device’s LLMs and generative AI routines.

Even then, iPhone 16 Pro models will see the updated A18 Pro chipset; and if Apple has made the same decisions as Qualcomm and Samsung, the A18 will have silicon specifically designed to support AI-intensive routines. While the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max may have enough power in the A17 to match the A18, the vanilla models with lower specs are likely to be left out in the cold.

There may be an option to offload some AI routines to the cloud. This is the approach taken by several Android manufacturers who are looking for broader AI processes or offering AI capabilities on lower-spec hardware. If that’s the case, expect Apple to lean heavily on the privacy implications of AI in the cloud and how Apple will be able to mitigate that risk.

I’m sure Apple would prefer that users consider the other option, buying a new phone specifically to upgrade to an AI-enabled phone.

AI means many things to many people, but one of the biggest takeaways for the smartphone industry is the need for new hardware to deliver competent solutions. Apple will no doubt bet on AI – a spin that will likely focus on supporting the user with summaries, better images, natural responses from Siri and more accurate image processing – but the main unit will repeat the competition… if you want one of the first smartphones with artificial intelligence, you will have to buy a new phone.

Now read the latest iPhone headlines in Forbes’ weekly roundup of Apple news…