ChatGPT, the popular AI assistant from OpenAI, can now handle tasks that Siri alone simply can't, such as identifying objects or people in photos, describing images to you, answering complex questions, planning travel itineraries, or even inventing a recipe when you send it a picture of ingredients. (We haven't taste-tested any yet.) Siri can still set timers and offer answers to simple questions, and it includes basic web citations, but ChatGPT's responses are clearer and more conversational.
Although ChatGPT is included in iOS 18.2, the integration isn't on by default; you need to enable it in Settings. And Siri offers to use ChatGPT only if it can't provide its own answer, or if you ask Siri to ask ChatGPT (a fun game of telephone).
(Important note: The New York Times sued OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, and Microsoft last year for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)
You'll always know when you're talking with ChatGPT. If you're concerned about an always-listening AI, note that you can easily tell when ChatGPT is activated. First, you have to turn it on by opening Settings and then going to Apple Intelligence & Siri > ChatGPT. The toggle at the top controls whether ChatGPT is available at all.
You have to specifically tell Siri to ask ChatGPT when you want AI to answer you. When a question stumps Siri (for example, if you ask what to cook with a list of ingredients), Siri will ask if you want to ask ChatGPT instead. When ChatGPT is answering a question, your iPhone will tell you that ChatGPT is responding.
While we were pleased to see that ChatGPT sometimes listed sources for its answers, we noticed that this wasn't always the case, though it should be, considering AI's tendency to assert factual inaccuracies.
ChatGPT can write emails, texts, travel plans, and recipes for you. The OpenAI assistant is also accessible in Apple's new Writing Tools, a feature that is available anywhere you work with text and is one of the most visible Apple Intelligence functions in iOS 18. (Tap and hold text or a blank text field, and select Writing Tools from the menu that appears.) At the bottom of the Writing Tools palette is a new option called Compose that uses ChatGPT to create text based on your prompt.
ChatGPT is quite good at generating text. Senior editor Caitlin McGarry has been relying on it to craft sample trip itineraries for vacations she may never take (though it's fun to dream). But when we asked ChatGPT to write new articles from scratch, it didn't provide any sources, and we noticed some inaccurate details, such as the number of servers and countries supported by a VPN company and the notion that I have ever tested mattresses.
You can use images to ask ChatGPT questions. Pressing and holding the iPhone 16-exclusive Camera Control button pulls up the new Visual Intelligence viewfinder, Apple's version of Google Lens. Visual Intelligence allows you to use image-search and AI tools on whatever you're looking at through the camera view (more on that in a minute), and an Ask button lets you send a question and an image to ChatGPT. We used ChatGPT to identify a dog's breed and to generate a recipe from a picture of some ingredients. You can also use Siri to ask ChatGPT to identify objects or people in a photo on your screen (though the results are hit-or-miss).
ChatGPT doesn't know who you are and won't use your data for its models. When Apple sends a request to ChatGPT through Siri or Visual Intelligence, it acts as a middleman and shields you from any data gathering by OpenAI. Apple's documentation in iOS says that OpenAI does not see your Apple account information or your IP address, but ChatGPT does receive "general location information" to "prevent fraud and comply with applicable law." Apple also says that OpenAI cannot store your requests or use your information to train its models.
There are limits on how much you can use ChatGPT. After a long day of testing iOS 18.2, we encountered an alert saying that we'd reached our daily limit for ChatGPT's "advanced capabilities." You can avoid this cap by buying a subscription to ChatGPT Plus and signing in with your account. Go to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri > ChatGPT to see how close you are to your daily limit.
