Upgrade your old iPhone with AI features without upgrading to the latest model

Apple’s recent iPhone 16 unveiling featured an exciting development: Apple Intelligence. This new software brings advanced AI capabilities to the latest iPhone models, automating tasks like generating images, reformulating emails, and quickly summarizing web articles. However, this software is limited to the newer iPhone 16 and last year’s iPhone 15 Pro due to their increased processing power. The iPhone 16, starting at $800, will be available later this month.

But what if upgrading isn’t your plan? Even before Apple announced its AI suite at a software conference in June, there were already a number of apps offering similar AI services. These apps use generative AI technology to produce text and images, and have been popular for the past couple of years.

For those who want to keep their older iPhones but still enjoy modern features, installing specific apps can provide many of Apple’s recently introduced AI capabilities. Here are a few ways to do this:

Arc Search and Humata AI are great examples of tools that summarize long texts into concise points, ideal for digesting long articles or detailed documents without the need for new hardware. Similarly, text transformation tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Bing AI are readily available in the App Store and can effectively adapt the tone and style of your communications.

For image creation, services like Meta AI inside Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as Adobe Firefly, allow users to generate custom images from text descriptions. These tools are already accessible to most iPhone users and can mimic the new image capabilities Apple is highlighting.

In the photo editing space, Google’s Magic Eraser feature in Google Photos offers similar functionality to Apple’s new tools, allowing users to enhance photos by removing unwanted elements with just a few taps.

Ultimately, while Apple’s latest AI features provide compelling reasons to consider an upgrade, many of these innovations aren’t unique. By exploring existing apps, users of older iPhone models can enjoy the benefits of AI improvements without needing a new phone.