The latest iPhones, unveiled by Apple at a marketing event Monday, look virtually identical to last year's models. But Apple is hoping that what's underneath — new software that brings what it describes as artificial intelligence to the new phones — will convince people to upgrade.
Apple Intelligence, the company’s new suite of AI services, automates tasks including generating images, rewriting emails, and summarizing web articles. Only the iPhone 16s introduced on Monday or last year’s iPhone 15 Pro can run the new software because older models are too slow to handle those tasks, the company says. The fastest iPhone 16 devices start at $800 and will hit stores later this month.
But what if I told you that there is another way to get the same benefits?
Long before Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence at a software conference in June, apps for automatically generating text and images were widely available. Based on a technology known as generative AI, which predicts which words and images go together to write a catchy poem or generate a realistic photo of a cat on a windowsill, for example, these types of services have been trending for the past two years.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
By downloading a handful of apps, iPhone owners can get similar benefits and keep their old devices longer. After testing dozens of generative AI apps over the past year, here are my recommendations.
Summarizing the text
One of the most anticipated features of Apple Intelligence is its ability to take large blocks of text and distill the main points into a few sentences. This ability could be useful for summarizing a long web article or lecture notes.
But there’s already a popular tool for summarizing web articles: Arc Search, a free browser developed by a startup. To test it, I loaded an 8,000-word feature from ProPublica about a chemist suing the manufacturer 3M. When I pinched the screen, the app generated a one-sentence overview of what the article was about, followed by three bullet points summarizing the key points. While the bullet points glossed over important details you’d get if you read the full article, I found the summary accurate.
To summarize notes, the free web app Humata AI has become popular among academic researchers and lawyers. By visiting Humata.ai in a web browser, you can upload a document such as a PDF, and from there you can type requests into a window to ask a chatbot to summarize the most important points. In response, the chatbot will display a digital copy of the PDF and highlight the relevant parts of the text.
Writing tools
Apple Intelligence also includes tools for rewriting text, for example to make an email look more professional. Many free apps can handle this task efficiently.
The most popular include OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, along with rivals like Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Bing AI, all of which can be downloaded from the App Store. Simply paste text into the app and ask the chatbot to rewrite it in a different tone, such as “Make this email more personal to a client I’ve known for many years.”
(Last year, The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for using copyrighted news articles without permission to train chatbots.)
For writing help, I prefer a lesser-known tool, Wordtune, from the startup AI21 Labs. Its interface, accessible at wordtune.com, is designed like a word processor for composing and editing text. You type a paragraph and click buttons to expand, shorten, or rewrite sentences to make them sound more informal or formal; the app will display a list of rewritten sentences for you to choose from.
Image generation
Another of Apple Intelligence’s most popular features is its ability to generate funny images, like an emoji of yourself eating pizza, to send to friends.
There are many options for generating images, including one that most iPhone users probably already have: Meta AI, Meta’s free chatbot that’s included with Instagram, WhatsApp, and its other apps. In the search bar at the top of Instagram, you can ask the chatbot to conjure up images by typing “/imagine” followed by a description.
I typed “/imagine me eating steak”. Meta AI then loaded a tool to take photos of my face from multiple angles. It produced a blatantly fake rendering of me drooling over a large rare steak inside a restaurant.
Other similar tools for typing prompts to generate images include Adobe Firefly, available at firefly.adobe.com, and ChatGPT.
Editing photos
Another new Apple Intelligence tool can automatically remove unwanted photographers with the touch of a button.
Google has offered a similar editing tool, Magic Eraser, within its Google Photos photo album app for iPhone and Android users since 2023. Within Google Photos, select your photo, tap the “edit” button, and select the Magic Eraser tool. You can then circle the distracting objects or people you want to erase.
I used Magic Eraser on a photo of my corgi, Max, at a dog park to remove a citation from a police officer for letting Max run off leash without permission. It replaced the infuriating piece of red tape with pine needles.