List of features users want in Apple Intelligence

The release of Apple Intelligence has many excited, but there’s still room for improvement. Apple could add a number of features to make it even better. Here are some ideas for what could take Apple’s AI suite to the next level.

1. More photo editing tools

Apple Intelligence only offers one core photo editing feature called Clean Up, which is similar to Google’s Magic Eraser, allowing you to remove unwanted objects from photos. While it’s a welcome addition, it’s not groundbreaking, especially since Google and Samsung have offered similar tools for quite some time.

Aside from Clean Up, Apple’s AI offers very few photo editing tools. In contrast, the Google Pixel 9 has a lot of great AI features, like Add Me, which ensures everyone is included in group photos, or Reimagine, which replaces parts of a photo with just text. It would be great if Apple could take inspiration from Google and introduce similar features.

For people who aren’t good at editing photos, they would love to have a feature that allows them to create filters based on text prompts. You can describe what color you want to highlight more or what kind of vibe you’re going for, and the AI ​​model will generate a filter that matches that description.

2. Create more realistic images

Apple also introduced a new app called Image Playground as part of Apple Intelligence, which lets users create images from text prompts in three different art styles: Animation, Illustration, and Sketch. The app integrates seamlessly with apps like Messages and even third-party platforms. While the implementation is well done, the results aren’t exactly impressive.

While this model works well with Genmoji, which lets you create completely new personalized emojis through text prompts, it should have more realistic art styles.

3. Check the call

One of my favorite features on the Google Pixel is call screening, where Google Assistant answers calls on your behalf and provides a live transcript, helping you decide whether to take the call or not. Google Assistant can even answer calls from unknown numbers on your behalf, and if it detects a robocall or spam call, Google Assistant will automatically hang up without bothering you.

It would be great if Siri could do something similar and create automated responses based on context. For example, if your iPhone knows you’re away, Siri could automatically ask the delivery person to leave a package at your door.

Unfortunately, Apple Intelligence is currently limited to creating transcripts and providing phone call summaries, but this is an area Apple should consider expanding.

4. Better live translation features

While you can use the built-in Translate app for basic tasks, like entering text and having it read aloud in another language, Apple Intelligence can contribute much more.

What users really want to see is real-time translation tools that work across the system. A great example is Samsung's Live Translate, which can transcribe and translate conversations in real time during phone calls. Google also offers similar features that work seamlessly across multiple apps, with all the processing happening on the device.

Since both Samsung and Google have already implemented this feature and their models run efficiently on devices, it's unclear why Apple isn't focusing on translation features with Apple Intelligence.

5. Option to choose a third-party LLM

While Siri is getting a major upgrade with features like on-screen recognition, it still can’t handle every request. To fill in those gaps, it uses ChatGPT as a fallback for generating responses or answering questions about photos or documents.

While ChatGPT is great, many people wish they could choose which third-party LLM they want to use, similar to how you can change your default search engine. We’ve seen ChatGPT alternatives work well for specific tasks. It would be even better if users could set preferences for different tasks; for example, automatically use Claude for image-related queries but switch to Gemini or ChatGPT for text generation.

These are the features that users want to see in Apple Intelligence. However, there is still much to look forward to when we see how Apple’s AI toolkit stacks up against offerings from Google and Samsung. While it’s not publicly available, you can try Apple Intelligence in the iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1 betas. Just keep in mind that your experience may not be completely stable, as this is still an early testing build.