I've downloaded iOS 18.2 for Apple Intelligence and... now what?

Apple Intelligence is here in Australia. With the arrival of iOS 18.2, Aussies can now have their phone do all those Apple Intelligenty things that were previously exclusive to US English users, or those willing to brave the beta software.

But downloading the software is only half the process. You need to dive into settings and actually turn it on.

You'll see in the Settings menu after you've updated the phone a new option: Apple Intelligence and Siri. Dive in here and hit the toggle. You'll be prompted to answer a few questions about how you want Apple Intelligence to work: the message types it will summarise for you, for example.

After you've switched it on, you have to wait for Apple to download support for Apple Intelligence features. You'll receive a notification when it's downloaded, but there's no progress bar to track how long the process will take. For me, it was over 20 minutes.

Once that's done, you'll have access to the AI image generation tool, which also powers the Genmoji function. Other functions, like the AI erase function in Photos, will need to be downloaded separately as you attempt to use the features.

What can Apple Intelligence do?

According to the Apple press release, these are the key features iPhone users should be looking forward to:

• Clean Up Photos and Relive Moments with a Smarter Photos App
• Design Fun, Original Images with Image Playground
• Create Genmoji to Fit Any Moment
• Take Notes to the Next Level with Image Wand
• Proofread, Rewrite and Summarise Text with Writing Tools
• Prioritise and Stay Focused
• Get More Done with a More Natural and Conversational Siri
• Learn More About Surroundings in One Click with Visual Intelligence
• Tap into ChatGPT with Siri and Writing Tools

First impressions: It's much like Samsung's AI features in that there's not a huge amount of really useful stuff here - it's mostly for show.

But I'm going to play around with some of these features over the next week or so, but if you beat me to it, let me know what you think.