iPhone 16's hugely improved Neural Engine will work with iOS 18's generative AI features

In case there was any doubt - let's take it all away right now in one fell swoop. AI is definitely the buzzword of this year, even though it kind of, sort of also was the buzzword of last year. But there's an important distinction - last year it was the buzzword generally in tech. This year, it's on in the mobile space. Just ask Samsung.

Or Apple, as it turns out. The next iPhone generation will come with a vastly improved Neural Engine - guess why. We dare you. Guess. Indeed, it's all about AI. Specifically, generative AI features coming to iOS 18, which should become official in June and launch in September alongside the iPhone 16 family.

Speaking of which, those upcoming iPhones will apparently benefit from a Neural Engine with "significantly" more cores, according to a new report from Taiwan today. While this doesn't give us the exact number of cores, the mere fact that there will be more of them is in itself significant, since the iPhone Neural Engine has had the same number of cores (16) since the iPhone 12.

Now it looks like we're going to be in for a huge leap, which is befitting this AI-ified year of course. A huge leap in AI features requires a huge leap in hardware to support those. Get this - there might even be a new version of Siri. Perhaps one that's finally smart.

Source (in Chinese) | Via