iOS 18.3 is here. After more than a month in beta, Apple made the update available to everyone with eligible devices on Monday. Among other changes, the new software will enable Apple Intelligence by default (though you can opt out of it) and provide more clarity on when the company’s AI generates notification summaries.
Apple announced earlier this month that a future update will more clearly label the summary of Apple Intelligence notifications introduced in iOS 18.1 in October. This comes after the BBC reported that news summaries had been distorted to falsely report that the suspected killer of health insurance CEO Brian Thompson had committed suicide. Other fake summaries claimed that a darts player won a world title before playing in the finals or that tennis superstar Rafael Nadal came out as gay.
The following week, Apple went a step further and suspended notification summaries for all news alerts in the iOS 18.3 beta. It’s not yet clear if it will return with today’s public release, but it will come back at some point.
Prior to iOS 18.3, summaries were only shown as small icons. The new software displays the entire summary in italics and an all-caps “Summary by Apple Intelligence” note below each AI-generated summary.
It appears that Apple wants to accelerate the adoption of Apple Intelligence on compatible devices, as iOS 18.3 enables a number of AI features by default during onboarding. You can opt out, but it will take a few seconds. Go to (Settings) > (Apple Intelligence & Siri) and turn off the toggle.
Other new features in iOS 18.3 are more subtle changes. Visual intelligence allows you to add calendar events from posters and flyers, and improves plant and animal identification. Of course, there are also many small bug fixes.
As always, you can get updates by going to (Settings) > (General) > (Software Update).
