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AI in IOS26?
or the lack of it? let's get into it
In partnership with
Yesterday summed up:
Did you install ios26 yet? |
But no, as random as this headline is, that’s the topic for today. Is ios26 legit ai???
Or just gimmicks labelled as AI?
Before we dive in, here’s what happened in the last 2 days (open my sunday special if you haven’t already 👀)
AI that’s trending:
1. World's First AI Minister Will Eliminate Corruption, Says Albania's PM.
Albania appointed the world's first AI government minister named "Diella" to handle all public tenders, promising 100% corruption-free decisions. PM Edi Rama says the virtual minister will make every government contract "perfectly transparent" by removing human bias from the procurement process. Diella has been operating as a digital assistant since January, already issuing 36,600 documents.
My take: When your government is so broken that citizens trust code more than humans, you've officially hit rock bottom.
Read more
2. AI Can Now Predict Blindness Years Before Doctors Can
Researchers trained AI on 36,673 eye scans to predict which keratoconus patients will go blind years before human doctors can detect progression. The system sorts patients into high-risk and low-risk groups with 90% accuracy, preventing unnecessary procedures while catching cases that would otherwise lead to corneal transplants.
My take: Machines can now see blindness coming better than eye doctors. Healthcare's about to become a lot cheaper when you replace specialists with algorithms that actually work.
3. China Declares Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws During US Trade Talks.
China accused Nvidia of breaking antitrust rules in its 2020 Mellanox acquisition, launching this investigation just as US-China trade negotiations began in Madrid. The timing appears strategic: Beijing opened semiconductor probes over the weekend while Treasury Secretary Bessent claimed talks were "progressing well." Nvidia stock dropped 2%.
My take: America's teaching the world that trade negotiations are just economic warfare with handshakes. China learned the lesson and is practicing it on Jensen Huang's wallet.
AI Tools That Made Me Question My Life Choices This Week
1. VaultGemma: Privacy-First Language Model
Google's first large-scale LLM (yet not a tool but yet relevant) trained entirely with differential privacy, offering mathematical guarantees that individual training data can't be extracted. Uses calibrated noise and specialized scaling laws to balance privacy with utility. Released open source at 1B parameters with zero detectable memorization.
My take: Interesting for organizations needing provable privacy, though current performance matches 5-year-old models. The research methodology is more valuable than the model itself right now.
2. Cal.ai: Voice AI Scheduling Assistant
Makes lifelike phone calls to handle meeting scheduling, confirmations, and follow-ups through Cal.com. Conducts natural conversations to find time slots and book appointments at $0.29 per minute. Includes call transcripts and performance analytics.
My take: Useful for high-volume scheduling or reducing no-shows. The voice quality is convincing enough for customer use, though costs add up quickly with heavy usage.
3. Corgi AI: Smart Read-Later with Chat
Turns saved articles, videos, and PDFs into a searchable knowledge base you can chat with. Extracts key moments and timestamps, organizes content into topic-specific "brains," and answers questions using only your saved material.
My take: Solves the real problem of bookmark graveyards. Success depends on consistently saving quality content, but the chat interface and auto-organization are genuinely helpful.
Getting back to the main topic, Apple announced iOS 26 with their "revolutionary" AI features. Live Translation, Visual Intelligence, Genmoji, Workout Buddy, and intelligent Shortcuts are finally here.
Except most of them aren't revolutionary. Some aren't even useful.
Let me walk through every single feature Apple announced and tell you what they actually got right and what's complete bs.
Visual Intelligence: Google Lens With Shopping Links
Apple's Visual Intelligence lets you search screen content, translate text, add calendar events from flyers, and find similar products on Google, eBay, Poshmark, and Etsy.
Reality check: This is literally Google Lens from 2017, which has been doing 12 billion monthly searches with the same features for years.
What's different: Apple integrated it system-wide through screenshots and Camera Control. Instead of opening a separate app, you screenshot and highlight what you want to search.
My take: The execution is smoother than Google's, but calling this "Visual Intelligence" is like calling copy-paste "Text Teleportation." It's useful, not revolutionary.
Genmoji: The Most Useless AI Feature Ever Created
Apple lets you "mix together emoji and combine them with descriptions to create a brand-new Genmoji."
This is where Apple completely lost the plot.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, wakes up thinking "I really need an AI-generated emoji that combines a taco with a crying face." The emoji keyboard already has 3,600+ emoji covering every conceivable human emotion and situation.
The real problem: Apple spent engineering resources on custom emoji generation instead of building AI that actually matters. While OpenAI was creating agents that can code entire applications, Apple was training models to create slightly different smiley faces.
My take: Genmoji is the perfect metaphor for Apple's AI strategy: technically impressive, completely pointless, and solving problems that don't exist.
Image Playground: Midjourney Lite
Apple's Image Playground creates images from descriptions and can now tap into ChatGPT for "Watercolor and Oil Painting" styles.
The honest assessment: This is fine. Kids will love it. Adults will use it exactly once and forget it exists.
Image generation isn't new: Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion have been doing this better for years. But having it integrated system-wide means it might actually get used for Messages and presentations.
The ChatGPT integration is interesting because it suggests Apple knows their own AI models aren't competitive. They're essentially admitting "our image AI sucks, so here's OpenAI's instead."
My take: Useful for casual users, but if you need good AI images, you'll still use dedicated tools.
Workout Buddy: Actually Clever
This one surprised me. Workout Buddy analyzes your workout data, heart rate, pace, and fitness history to deliver "personalized, spoken motivation throughout their session."
It uses a "text-to-speech model" with "voice data from Fitness+ trainers" so it sounds natural during workouts.
Why this works: It's using AI for genuine personalization based on real data. Instead of generic "you got this!" motivation, it can say "your heart rate is higher than usual for mile 2, consider slowing your pace" or "you're 30 seconds faster than your last 5K attempt."
The competition: Strava has insights, but mostly post-workout. Peloton has live coaching, but it's generic. Apple's combining real-time biometric data with personalized AI coaching.
My take: This is what AI should be doing: taking data you're already generating and making it actionable in real-time. Actually useful.
Intelligent Shortcuts: Finally, Some Real AI
Apple opened up their on-device language model to Shortcuts, letting you "summarize text with Writing Tools or creating images with Image Playground" in automated workflows.
Examples: "comparing an audio transcription to typed notes, summarizing documents by their contents, extracting information from a PDF and adding key details to a spreadsheet."
This is huge. For 7 years, Shortcuts has been limited to basic if-then automation. Now it can actually understand and process content. You can now create Shortcuts that read your emails, understand the content, and take intelligent actions based on what they find.
My take: This is the first Shortcuts update that actually matters since 2018. Power users will build some genuinely impressive automations.
The Random Useful Stuff
Apple also added:
Reminders can identify and categorize actions from emails/notes
Apple Wallet summarizes order tracking from merchant emails
Messages suggests polls and creates custom backgrounds with Image Playground
These are small but genuinely helpful. Wallet tracking is something people actually need (and will replace a lot of apps that scan your messages). Messages poll suggestions solve a real friction point. None of it is groundbreaking, but all of it will get used.
The Bottom Line
iOS 26 is proof that Apple fundamentally misunderstands the AI revolution.
Some of the above is good, but it doesn’t feel like innovation.
They make our lives easier, but do they make it substantially better? Nope
By now I was expecting AI (Apple Intelligence) to clone your usage and do tasks for you, or actually create their own LLM that helps you do things you don’t want to on your phone (emails, texts, managing spam, etc)
Yes, Apple's iOS 26 AI is incrementally better at tasks you're already doing.
But, the AI revolution is about fundamentally different capabilities you never imagined possible.
Until next time,
Vaibhav 🤝
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