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Apple’s heavily marketed Visual Intelligence is just a fancy Google image search

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4 weeks ago

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Apple’s heavily marketed Visual Intelligence is just a fancy Google image search

Of the many still unavailable Apple Intelligence features that have been marketed by the company, one in particular seemed quite promising: Visual Intelligence. The idea was that you could point your brand new iPhone 16 at anything you see and it would tell you all about it. Turns out, this Visual Intelligence is just an API call to Google or ChatGPT. In short, it does nothing new.Bloomberg’s Apple insider Mark Gurman says that this feature probably took Apple around a week to implement at most. Though I’m willing to bet it was probably longer than that — software development often runs into unforeseen complications — it likely wasn’t that difficult.

While Apple has marketed Visual Intelligence as this amazing next step in the usefulness and practicality of an iPhone, it’s just a front for services you already had access to. Apple Intelligence does no heavy lifting here, at least for now. That may change whenever the revamped Siri and other AI features eventually roll out next year.

Apple Intelligence promised a lot but we’re still waiting. | Video credit — Apple

Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with resorting to existing services but I do think it should have been more transparent. Google’s image search in particular has deteriorated beyond belief these past few years in my experience. It’s practically useless now, and iPhone users should know what they’re buying.

If one of the iPhone 16’s most marketed features is something anyone on any platform could have done, it gives me even less hope for the remaining features awaiting release. Especially after this past year where Apple has had one bad software update after another.

The average consumer currently has ChatGPT integration to look forward to whenever iOS 18.2 comes out. That will definitely make Apple Intelligence a little more enticing — and store demos easier for Apple employees — but it will hardly come close to what we’ve been promised. I suppose it remains to be seen if the new Siri and on-screen awareness will live up to the hype or just be old tools in a newer packaging.

Step your game up, Apple. Or iPhone 17 won’t be your most ambitious project as you claim.

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