Apple Intelligence — the suite of artificial intelligence (AI) features coming to a handful of eligible devices next year — could power a novel feature on Apple Music, the company’s music streaming service. Introduced at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2024 on June 10, Apple Intelligence is expected to enable several other AI features on iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia. Although multiple developer beta updates have been introduced till now, none of them have brought access to these AI features. Now, code discovered in the recently released iOS 18 Developer Beta 4 update hints at a new feature which Apple did not showcase – the ability to create AI album art for Apple Music playlists.
Apple Working on AI Images for Apple Music Playlists
9to5Mac spotted code on iOS 18 Developer Beta 4 that was released on Tuesday, that contains strings referencing a feature that lets users generate AI artworks for playlists on Apple Music. It is speculated to arrive in the form of a Create Image button that is displayed while editing an existing playlist.
According to the publication, tapping the button will open up Image Playground — the company’s text-to-image AI tool which is part of Apple Intelligence. When invoked, the iPhone could ask the user what kind of image they wish to generate, presenting options such as animation, illustration or sketch. This is merely speculation, however, as Apple is yet to confirm the presence of such a feature on iOS 18.
The AI feature is reportedly under development and is not available to beta testers. Apple first announced that eligible devices in a few languages would get support for Apple Intelligence later this year, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman recently suggested that these features — including the various Siri upgrades revealed by Apple — may be delayed until 2025.
In his newsletter, Gurman claimed that the iPhone maker is targeting Spring 2025 for its release, while Apple has yet to reveal when it will roll out these features to users.
The journalist has also revealed that the Cupertino-based technology firm could release Apple Intelligence features to developers for testing and debugging via the iOS 18.4 update in January 2025.
However, the purported delay in the rollout of Apple Intelligence does not necessarily imply that AI features will not be available to iPhone users in 2024. Some of the ones announced by Apple, such as text-generation and formatting tools powered by ChatGPT – OpenAI’s popular conversational chatbot — are still expected to be on course for rollout later this year.
