Here's when iOS 18 and Apple Intelligence will be available
iOS 18 is coming on September 16, Apple has revealed today. That's in exactly one week from today, and ahead of the release date of the new iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max, which are all going to become available on September 20 and ship with iOS 18 preinstalled. The update will roll out to all supported iPhones and should become available to all who want it on that day - no multi-week rollout shenanigans with Apple (see that, Google?).
Apple Intelligence will not be part of iOS 18. The first batch of features will arrive as part of iOS 18.1 (and iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1), which will be landing in October. The first batch of features will only be available in US English, with an expansion in December promised to include localized English in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK. Next year, Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish will be supported too.
So what AI features are you actually getting in October? Writing Tools, creating movies based off a description in the Memories feature in Photos, searching for specific photos using natural language, searching for specific moments in videos, Clean Up which removes things or people from photos, recording, transcribing, and summarizing audio in the Notes and Phone apps, summarized notifications, Priority Messages in Mail, summaries of emails, Smart Reply in Mail, and a redesigned Siri which supports typing to it and is more "natural" and "flexible". Siri can also answer "thousands of questions" about the features and settings of Apple devices.
Then, "later this year and in the months following", you'll get Image Playground to generate images and emoji, Image Wand to generate images from sketches, and Siri will use your own personal context to deliver intelligence tailored to you. It will also have onscreen awareness and be able to take hundreds of new actions in and across Apple and third-party apps. ChatGPT is coming in this wave too.
Apple Intelligence will only be available for the newly launched iPhone 16 family, the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPads and Macs with M1 or later chips.