When Apple first teased its AI ambitions, expectations soared. The company’s ecosystem, tightly integrated with its hardware and software, seemed like the perfect breeding ground for an AI-driven experience that would outclass competitors. Yet, despite bold promises and relentless marketing, many of the AI features that Apple hinted at are still nowhere to be found. Here’s a breakdown of the key Apple Intelligence features Apple promised but hasn’t yet delivered.
Apple Intelligence Promised Features
1. Personal Context
Among Apple’s upcoming AI features, Personal Context for Siri stands out as one of the most powerful and eagerly awaited. This feature will allow Siri to understand your data better, making it far more useful in everyday tasks. Apple has already teased some of its capabilities, but ultimately, it’s meant to make Siri more intuitive and personalized.
To achieve this, Apple Intelligence builds a “semantic index” of your data. This includes your photos, files, calendar events, notes, and even links people send you. When you ask Siri a question, it can instantly find relevant information from this index.
For example, you could ask Siri to find the message in which your mom sent her flight details, whether in a text or an email. You could also check if you have time to drive between two meetings. Siri will analyze your calendar, location data, and travel time to provide an answer. If you’ve taken a picture of your ID, Siri can even extract details from it to help you complete a form.
2. On-screen Awareness
On-screen awareness helps Siri understand and interact with the content on your device’s screen. If a friend sends you their new address in a text, you can simply tell Siri, “Add this address to their contact card.” It will pull the information directly from your screen.
This feature uses the App Intents framework, allowing developers to make their app content accessible to Siri and Apple Intelligence. By leveraging on-screen content, Siri provides more contextually relevant assistance.
3. In-app Actions
Siri is set to become even more powerful by taking actions for you across apps. Instead of simply understanding your data better, Siri will perform tasks without requiring pre-set shortcuts.
This is possible through App Intents, a framework that lets third-party apps communicate their available actions to the system. For example, your camera app can tell Siri it can take a photo. Your messaging app can send texts, while your maps app provides transit directions. These actions can also be linked, like pulling flight details from a note and sending them via Messages without extra effort from you.
For now, you have to manually create shortcuts and then trigger them with Siri. However, when this feature is rolled out, Siri will automatically understand what apps can do, saving you time and effort. Rather than setting up a shortcut first, you can simply say, “Send my partner’s flight details via Messages,” and Siri will do it instantly.