4 Reasons Apple Intelligence Isn't Impressive

Apple Intelligence promised big things, but after exploring its features, many people were disappointed. From uninspiring photo editing tools to limited device compatibility, Apple still has a long way to go to catch up with its competitors.

1. Hardly any image editing tools

Many were eager to see what Apple had in store for its photo editing AI, especially after Google's impressive work. Unfortunately, people were left sorely disappointed. The only feature, Clean Up, works like Google's Magic Eraser, allowing you to remove objects or people from photos.

While it's impressive that it runs on the device and works great for simple edits, the results don't match Google's tools. What's more disappointing, however, is the lack of additional photo editing features.

2. Summary announcements can be very successful or unsuccessful

One Apple Intelligence feature that many people particularly like is notification summaries, which use built-in LLM to provide a concise summary of all notifications from an app.

This feature is especially useful for managing long group chat messages or a series of notifications. While the concept sounds great in Apple's announcement, the actual implementation is less than ideal.

You'll get summaries, especially from messaging apps, that don't make sense. Sometimes it just gives you something really shocking, but then you realize it didn't interpret the message correctly.

This has caused many people to stop relying on these summaries altogether because they are unreliable.

3. Device compatibility is extremely limited

Another big disappointment with Apple Intelligence is its limited availability on devices. While it's understandable that features like Clean Up or Writing Tools require more RAM and processing power, it's absurd that cloud-based features aren't available on older devices.

A good example is the ChatGPT integration, where Siri can tap into ChatGPT for requests it can't handle directly. The same problem applies to Visual Intelligence, which doesn't involve on-device processing. It's frustrating because you can use third-party apps to access the same features on unsupported devices and get nearly identical results.

4. Image Playground seems like a gimmick

One of the worst Apple Intelligence features is Image Playground. This app generates AI images based on text descriptions or existing photos—but it's hard to tell when people will actually use it.

The art style seems too childish for many people's taste. I can't imagine using Image Playground to create images worth sharing with friends or family. It just feels like a gimmick. Of all the desirable Apple Intelligence features, a more realistic image-generating model would definitely be at the top.

One bright spot, however, is Genmojis, which are essentially custom emojis that you can create based on a text prompt. This is an area where Apple has really done well.

Samuel Daniel

Update 31 December 2024