Some of the artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI features expected to arrive alongside iOS 18 this fall are thought to require at least an iPhone 15 Pro.
Apple is expected to adopt a flexible approach to iOS 18’s AI, combining on-device and cloud processing. For simpler tasks based on Apple’s Ajax large language model (LLM) that’s expected to power Siri, no internet connectivity will be required.
On the other hand, on-device features will require modern hardware. According to the latest edition of Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter on Bloomberg, you’ll need at least an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max or later for on-device AI in iOS 18.
Rumor: iOS 18’s on-device AI will require an iPhone 15 Pro
The regular iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, as well as older iPhones, won’t be supported. We can speculate that any iPhones which couldn’t run iOS 18’s on-device AI might instead use the power of the cloud as a fallback mechanism.
The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are the only devices powered by A17 Pro, Apple’s latest iPhone chip. The likely reason iOS 18’s on-device AI may require the A17 Pro is its much-improved neural processing unit, which Apple calls the Neural Engine.
However, some of the features that won’t run on-device on the iPhone 15 Pros could work on the iPhone 16 family, provided Apple equips those phones with an even more powerful Neural Engine. A February report said the A18 chips for the iPhone 16 family will beef up the Neural Engine with “significantly” more cores.
What is a Neural Engine? How does it work?
The Neural Engine is solely dedicated to accelerating machine learning and artificial intelligence tasks in a power-friendly manner, freeing up the CPU.
The A17 Pro’s Neural Engine has twice the cores as its predecessor, resulting in a more than 2x speed increase, going from 17 trillion operations per second in the A16 chip to 35 trillion operations per second. The only faster Neural Engine is in the M4 chip powering the new iPad Air and Pro, rated at 37 trillion operations per second.
In comparison, the original Neural Engine in the A11 Bionic chip used for the iPhone X could handle “only” 600 billion operations per second. This makes the latest Neural Engine in the Apple M4 a whopping 60x faster than the iPhone X’s.
Apple to unveil AI strides in iOS 18 at WWDC24
The Cupertino tech giant will show off its AI advances at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, which runs from June 10 through June 14 this year. Unlike its technology peers who shove AI wherever possible, Apple’s approach should be more mindful and oriented to practical tasks.
AI features will be reportedly integrated into core apps. In Messages, AI will create new emoji based on message content. In Safari, AI will summarize webpages and provide recaps of meetings. In the Music app, AI will suggest new playlists.
Other AI-based enhancements are expected, like a writing assistant, some of which may arrive later via updates to iOS 18 in 2024 and 2025.