Apple's generative AI capabilities will be at the heart of the iPhone 16 experience -- over time. Right now, you can try out the public beta if you have an iPhone 15 Pro or any iPad or Mac with an M1 chip and later.

Apple's push for generative AI across its multiple OSes has begun, under the none-too-subtle name of Apple Intelligence. That kicked off when Apple Intelligence stole the show during the WWDC keynote back in June and took a step forward at It's Glowtime event earlier in September that introduced the iPhone 16 lineup.

During the Glowtime keynote presentation, Craig Federighi, Apple's head of software engineering, said that Apple Intelligence is "at the heart of the iPhone 16 experience."

Read more: Apple iPhone 16 Pro Review: Compelling Upgrade, and My Favorite Feature in Years

The company had opened up Apple Intelligence for public testing days before the iPhone 16 hit stores which included some of Apple's promised AI-powered writing tools, Siri enhancements and photo library-connected requests. But it's not being released in full until later this fall for a subset of iPhones, iPads and Macs with the necessary chipsets -- and even then it will debut as a beta feature to opt into.
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So Apple Intelligence is really a beta within a beta: it's part of the public beta of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 and MacOS Sequoia 15.1.

Apple is not introducing all its promised AI-driven upgrades at once. The public beta version of Apple Intelligence has AI-suggested writing tools that pop up in documents or emails, photo tools including Clean Up to remove unwanted parts of an image and a number of Siri changes including a new voice designed to sound more natural, more contextual conversations, a new glowing border around the display when Siri is running and a double-tap gesture on the bottom of the screen to type to Siri.

There's also instant movie memory requesting in Photos and AI summaries in Messages, Mail, Notifications and Notes. But ChatGPT plug-ins, Apple's GenMoji and Image Playground features and other Siri features aren't on board yet.

The public beta has an option in the Settings app that lets you opt into Apple Intelligence features for testing, a process that Apple says could take hours to get approved for. It's still unknown whether Apple's public release of the Apple Intelligence beta arriving later this year will have a similar opt-in process.

While some of Apple's AI features sound genuinely useful, the limited rollout to only certain iPhones, iPads and Macs later this year (iPhone 15 Pro models or later, and Macs and iPads with M-series chips) means it won't be used by everyone. We will, hopefully, begin to understand what those features will actually be capable of doing.