An AI-powered iPhone 16? What Apple may roll out in its latest smartphone

With Samsung and Google smartphones already offering AI power, Apple is looking towards the iPhone 16 to really ramp up the rivalry.

Ever since the launch of the iPhone 15, the public at large and analysts hunched over their laptops, have been trying to figure out when Apple will actually jump wholeheartedly on the AI bandwagon. Famously, Apple even refused to use the phrase ‘artificial intelligence’ preferring ‘machine learning’ till very recently. Call it what you will, with the entire world besotted with AI, Apple could no longer ignore this new tech if it did not want to damage its iPhone business. Now, it has already become quite clear that Apple is into AI big time considering the activity around the subject that is happening across the company. Even CEO Tim Cook has gone on record to say that Apple will break new ground in GenAI.

iPhone 16 will have a number of features that will harness the power of AI for users across multple tasks. (Representational image) (REUTERS)

What that means is that the upcoming iPhone 16 is set to pack every kind of AI feature imaginable. Notably, AI on iPhone 16 will be coming through the software, iOS 18, and the new A18 chip for the smartphone will add more power to its capabilities. It has an upgraded Neural engine for running Ai.

And once iOS 18 is launched, it will also come to all the older eligible models including iPhone 15, iPhone 14, iPhone 13 and so on. But while AI features will most likely be available on device on iPhone 16, the older iPhones will be able to access it via the Internet as they will not be able to handle the load with their older chips.

And then there is Siri. The Apple assistant has been a huge part of the reasons why people buy iPhones. However, arguably, it was not as smart as Amazon Alexa of for that matter Google Assistant.

But, AI is set to add the smarts to Siri and it is expected to shine on as a much more powerful model that could compete on equal footing with any other.

Apple Messages app too could get AI integrated to both answer questions as well as auto complete sentences. This was hinted at by Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman.

Another area where Apple could be playing catch-up with others is image editing. Both Google and Samsung smartphones have stolen a march over Apple in this regard with their AI powered image editors. However, it has been reported now that Apple has tied up with a company to work on this project, but nothing much is known about it yet.

Will all this action translate into an iPhone 16 that the world would want to buy? Considering that Google and Samsung smartphones have moved ahead, it will be a tough task for Apple to pull. But over the years, it has done that time and again.