Apple releases iOS 18.2 with Visual Intelligence and Image Playground

Apple has released iOS 18.2 along with matching updates for iPadOS and macOS, bringing Visual Intelligence to the iPhone 16 family along with a host of Apple Intelligence image features.

As unveiled in September, Visual Intelligence uses your phone’s camera to recognize the world around you and perform AI tasks. Press and hold the Camera Control button and the iPhone can search Google for goods to buy, answer queries with ChatGPT, or summarize the text in front of you. This is somewhat similar to Google Lens, but it’s available more immediately and isn’t tied to Google’s AI models.

Image generation also plays an important part in the iOS 18.2 upgrade. You can now produce Genmoji, or custom emoji based on you or generic elements. Image Playground is also available, both integrated into Messages and as a standalone app, to create images based on prompts, suggestions, and (if you like) people you know. It’s limited to animated and illustrated styles, so you won’t get photorealistic pictures like you might with OpenAI’s DALL-E or Google Gemini.

Siri can now use ChatGPT to fulfill requests with your permission, including image and text generation. You don’t need a ChatGPT account, and neither Apple nor OpenAI stores requests.

On the iPad, Image Wand turns your Notes sketches and phrases into detailed images. Writing Tools are now on the Mac, and iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 all let you describe the tone you’d like to set for text instead of choosing from simple options like “friendly” or “professional.”

In addition to the feature expansion, Apple Intelligence is now available in languages beyond US English. You can use it in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK without having to change your settings.

Non-English countries are expected to receive support in early 2025. Regardless of region, you’ll need at least an iPhone 15 Pro, the iPad mini 7, or an M1-based device (such as the iPad Air or Macs from the past few years) to use Apple Intelligence.

Apple hasn’t yet specified when some of the most advanced Intelligence features will be available, including a Siri upgrade that understands context and specific app functions.

Those are also believed to be arriving in early 2025, however, and Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman has suggested that Apple is moving to a more gradual approach for updates as a whole with even some iOS 19 features already moved to 2026.

Apple is planning a big update for spring with iOS 18.4, but some capabilities planned for later in 2025 are already postponed. I’m told that a larger-than-usual number of features for iOS 19 (beyond LLM Siri) are already delayed till spring 2026 (19.4). https://t.co/j7au0Dp4MD

— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) November 24, 2024

If accurate, that isn’t surprising. Generative AI models like GPT and Gemini tend to have rapid update schedules that can make it difficult to stick to Apple’s traditional yearly releases. Apple is also racing to add AI features while simultaneously improving its underlying software — even Google has only gradually introduced Gemini Live and similar functionality to Android.

In that sense, iOS 18.2 is part of a transition to a new approach where Apple delivers a steady stream of improvements rather than monolithic upgrades.

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