I don't think many people would dispute the idea that iOS 26 didn't introduce a lot of new Apple Intelligence features, especially when stacked up against the all-out focus on AI that marked 2024's iOS 18 rollout. Oh, there are some new capabilities, like on-the-fly translations in phone calls, FaceTime sessions, and texts, but for the most part, Apple Intelligence receives a few updates to existing features while taking a backseat to iOS 26's Liquid Glass overhaul.
Certainly, that's been one of the largest criticisms you can find from my colleagues in their iPhone 17 reviews. Apple already trails the likes of Google and Samsung when it comes to AI features, and shifting the attention to interface improvements in iOS 26 runs the risk of the iPhone falling further behind.
It's a legitimate complaint. And yet, I'm not especially worried, as one of the AI features Apple did focus on with iOS 26 shows how Apple Intelligence can progress when Apple really puts its mind to it.
Forget about improvements to Image Playground or Genmoji. If you like those AI-powered features, more power to you, but they don't really figure into how I use my iPhone. Instead, it's the Visual Intelligence update in iOS 26 that leaves me hopeful that Apple is on the right path to better AI capabilities, even if that journey is going to take longer than any of us would like.
Visual Intelligence, revisited
Introduced with last year's iPhone 16 launch, Visual Intelligence was one of the best Apple Intelligence additions to the iPhone's bag of tricks, in my opinion. Summoning your phone's camera — either with the Camera Control button on the iPhone 16 models or a lock screen shortcut that became available for the iPhone 15 Pro — you could capture an image and then look up more information about it, with the help of either Google or ChatGPT.
My colleague Richard Priday used Apple Intelligence as a tour guide to help him get more out of an art museum visit. Another colleague, Amanda Carswell, turned to Apple's AI for help with guidance through a corn maze.
Those are certainly fun uses, but there are practical ones as well. Say, you see a poster with an event date you want to attend. Rather than manually create an entry in your Calendar app, you can summon Visual Intelligence and have it do the work for you. Visual Intelligence can also provide translations of text in different languages — helpful as a travel tool.
Pretty helpful stuff, like I said, but there's a modest barrier to entry with Visual Intelligence. If I remember to whip out my phone and take a picture, that can come in very handy, but that's not something I'm always going to take the time to do. And what if I come across information that I can't easily photograph so that Visual Intelligence can work its magic, like when I read something online?
Visual Intelligence in iOS 26
Enter the updated Visual Intelligence for iOS 26. It can still do all the things it could before with a camera, but now those powers are extended to screenshots, too. All I have to do is capture a screenshot like always — press the sleep and volume up button — and a series of Visual Intelligence commands pops up on my screen.
If there's something in another language in the screenshot, I can have Visual Intelligence translate it. If there's a movie poster on the website of my local Cineplex advertising a limited-time showing, I can have Visual Intelligence create a calendar. And I can use the feature to look up alternative ingredients or suggested cook times when I'm perusing recipes.
It's not a perfect implementation. As Mark Spoonauer observes in his iPhone 17 Pro Max review, Apple's implementation falls far short of what you can do on a Pixel phone. Google's Gemini Live can analyze what's on your screen and talk back to you, whereas Apple Intelligence requires you to take a physical screenshot and then type in whatever questions you have. Siri isn't even involved in the process.
I'm not going to pretend that Apple is in the same league as Google when it comes to on-device AI. (Our AI phone face-off from earlier this year proved that, and that was prior to Google further raising the bar with this year's Pixel 10 release.) But at the same time, we need to acknowledge that iOS 26 makes Visual Intelligence better. And even incremental progress is still progress.
Apple Intelligence outlook
If Apple is ever going to kick its AI efforts into high gear, it's going to take efforts like the one shown in the iOS 26 version of Visual Intelligence. The improvements will need to be thoughtful and well-implemented, extending the capabilities of your phone.
The fact that Apple can do that with one feature in its suite of AI tools suggests that it can repeat the trick with others. And with an AI-infused version of Siri apparently proving to be a tough nut for Apple to crack, I'll take any sign of progress that I can get.
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More from Tom's Guide
- iOS 26 complaints are piling up — should you wait to upgrade?
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