While we’ve been waiting for our first official look at iOS 18 — which should happen next week when Apple previews the new iPhone software at WWDC 2024 — one rumor made me stand out. This is not the full list of AI features that are apparently coming to your iPhone via this software update. Rather, the part that grabbed my attention was the suggestion that Apple plans to make sure that most of the AI features work on your iPhone instead of using cloud servers for additional processing. This sounded attractive to me from both an efficiency and privacy perspective.
As it turns out, that’s not really the whole story.
Oh, some features will exist entirely on your iPhone. But there are others that will have to be moved to the cloud, no matter how much Apple wants to keep things iPhone-centric. And the number of device capabilities can be extremely limited depending on which iPhone you’re using.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has the latest details on Apple’s AI plans for iOS 18, especially when it comes to the revamped Siri personal assistant that will be at the heart of many of these new features. But the part that stood out to me was this observation by Gurman: “As part of [iOS 18] implementation, the more basic AI tasks will be handled on the devices themselves, while the more advanced capabilities will be handled by cloud computing.”
It’s a bit different from what we’ve heard before about the device’s capabilities. And while that doesn’t make iOS 18 any less exciting, it does make me wonder how consistent the experiences will be across iPhones.
Which iPhones can work with AI on the device?
Device AI is attractive for several reasons. First, if something gets left on your device, you and only you will see it — even Apple won’t know what you’re using AI for. In an age where you can’t help but feel like you’re constantly being watched, that’s comforting. Also, the device’s artificial intelligence would take care of the tasks faster than if your requests had to be transferred to the cloud, processed, and then the responses transferred back to you. On-device AI is the better approach—if your device has the hardware to handle it.
As Gurman explains, iOS 18 will be able to discern what is a primary task and what needs to be handled in the cloud. For older phones, this could be quite a lot – the report claims that many of the iOS 18 features on the device will require an A17 chipset or better.
Put another way, that means you’ll need to have an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max to take full advantage of the device’s AI in iOS 18. Not even last year’s iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus — powered as they are by A16 Bionic chips — will meet processing requirements. It’s also safe to say that the iPhone 16 lineup won’t have any issues with the device’s AI, as all of these phones are expected to feature new A18 chipsets.
It’s not uncommon for older phones to miss some iOS add-ons. For example, iOS 17 added gesture-based visual effects to FaceTime calls, but you need at least an iPhone 12 to use this feature. In the case of device AI in iOS 18, however, it sounds like a lot phones will be on the outside, especially if the iOS 18 compatibility rumors are true and this year’s update ends up working on the same devices that can run iOS 17. That will cover phones dating back to the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max , which came out in 2019.
What we need to hear from Apple
A cynic might argue that this is Apple hoping to use an iOS update to upgrade the iPhone in an age where people are becoming more adamant about holding on to their current phone. Even if that was the main motivation here — and I don’t think it is — I’m not sorry that Apple wants to sell more iPhones. They have a billion dollar business to run. But it will still be disappointing for some in the WWDC audience to hear what is and isn’t available to them if they decide to keep the same phone.
The disappointment isn’t a deal-killer, though, as it sounds like the AI features will be available on older iPhones — it’s just that many of them will need the cloud to work. So it will be up to Apple to explain what this will mean. In the past, when it came to new iOS features that didn’t work on older devices, Apple relegated that information to the fine print on its preview pages. That won’t happen this time: users need to know what’s on the device and what’s being transferred to the cloud, and Apple needs to clarify how that affects performance.
Apple will want to be upfront about the privacy implications of cloud-based AI features and what it will do to keep user data under lock and key. To that end, Gurman’s report says Apple plans to rely on the Secure Enclave in the Mac chips powering cloud servers to protect privacy. Apple also reportedly has no plans to create user profiles and will issue reports detailing how it protects AI-generated information.
It sounds promising, but I’m one of those people who needs Tim Cook standing in front of the Keynote deck to really understand how something is expected to pan out. The good news is that we’ll know exactly how AI features will work on old and new iPhones in a very short time.
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