This week, Apple released the first beta version of iOS 18.1 for developers, featuring some new AI capabilities under the Apple Intelligence brand. While some of these features already seem useful, the most significant updates, including a radically improved Siri voice assistant, are set to debut later, reports The Verge.

The major Siri AI update is expected to roll out in a few months. The enhanced AI assistant will learn to understand what is on the screen and perform actions on behalf of the user. For now, Apple has introduced smaller changes: improved speech recognition, better natural language understanding, and the ability to interact via text. When Siri is active, the phone’s screen is illuminated along the edges, but the assistant’s capabilities are still mainly limited to querying Google for information.

Significant improvements have been made in text handling. The existing voice transcription feature in the “Notes” app is now much smarter: for instance, Apple Intelligence breaks speech into meaningful units and can create lists, which can be useful for tasks like making packing lists for a trip. In one instance, the AI even generated a table. The text-related tools, including writing, editing, and summarizing, are unobtrusive and users can choose to skip them if desired.

Changes in the “Mail” app are more noticeable. A new section on the main page displays emails that the AI deems most important — and they usually are. Instead of showing the first lines of incoming emails, the app now provides text summaries. This feature is generally helpful, though in some cases, the summaries of promotional emails may be amusing.

In the “Photos” app, natural language search is now operational. The AI can indeed find photos from the gallery based on descriptions, though it sometimes produces irrelevant results. This feature is expected to become a regular part of daily use due to its intuitive simplicity.