by Tim Hardwick
Apple is planning an artificial intelligence overhaul in iOS 18, but some new features are unlikely to work on older iPhones even if they appear in the new operating system's compatibility list.
Apple's initial AI roadmap for iOS 18 is reported to have two parts: core AI features that will be processed automatically . device and more advanced features that will require communication with Apple servers.
These features are based on an updated version of Siri. To this end, Apple engineers had to redesign Siri's core software using large language models (LLM), the algorithm at the heart of generative AI.
According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, this will allow Siri to open specific documents, organize notes in folders, delete emails, summarize an article, send web links via email, and more. Apple reportedly plans to use artificial intelligence to analyze what people do on their devices in order to automatically enable these features.
Apple's own LLM program is expected to solve what are considered basic artificial intelligence problems. and it will be completely executed on the device. In other words, the model runs on the iPhone processor, not in the cloud. It's unclear what the base task criteria will be, but LLM is said to include code that determines whether the request can be processed on the device or requires Apple servers.
According to Gurman, the device's AI capabilities will mostly require an iPhone 15 Pro or later. Meanwhile, there are rumors that iOS 18 will be compatible with the same iPhone models as iOS 17. Combining these two reports, we can expect the next iPhone models to run iOS 18 but not support some AI features Apple on device: br/>
- iPhone 15
- iPhone 15 Plus
- iPhone 14
- iPhone 14 Plus
- iPhone 14 Pro
- iPhone 14 Pro Max
- iPhone 13
- iPhone 13 mini
- iPhone 13 Pro
- iPhone 13 Pro Max
- iPhone 12
- iPhone 12 mini
- iPhone 12 Pro
- iPhone 12 Pro Max
- iPhone 11
- iPhone 11 Pro
- iPhone 11 Pro Max
- iPhone XS
- iPhone XS Max
- iPhone XR
- iPhone SE (2nd generation)
- iPhone SE (3rd generation)
iPadOS 18 and macOS 15 are expected to use many of the same AI features, and Gurman said Mac and iPad will require at least an M1 chip for AI capabilities on device. In other words, Apple's silicon Macs are a requirement for built-in AI in macOS 15 (excluding Intel Macs), while anything older than the fifth-generation iPad Pro will not support on-device AI features in iPadOS 18.
While it's not entirely clear which hardware factor is the key requirement for Apple's on-device AI, it's worth noting that the (unsupported) standard iPhone 15 models have 6GB of RAM, while the supported Pro models have 8GB of RAM. . Likewise, all Apple Silicon iPads and Macs have a minimum of 8GB. Even when reduced for narrow use cases, LLM requires a lot of working memory due to the huge number of parameters involved, so Apple may run into hardware limitations of its own devices here.
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