US tech giant Apple’s new artificial intelligence service, Apple Intelligence, has officially launched Korean-language support this month, marking a significant step in localizing its smart features for Korean users. After a week of hands-on testing with the iPhone 16, The Korea Herald found the service to be convenient and surprisingly proficient in Korean.
While the English version of Apple Intelligence has been available on the iPhone 16 series since October last year, the rollout of non-English languages, including Korean, came about six months later. The service, available to download with iOS 18.4, includes a suite of AI tools such as text rewriting assistance, photo cleanup capabilities and native ChatGPT integration.
Even for a Samsung Electronics Galaxy smartphone user not so familiar with Apple’s ecosystem, the intuitive design meant there was no need to consult a manual. Among the standout features were the writing tools and email summarization tools, both of which proved to be highly practical in daily tasks.
Instead of combing through a cluttered inbox, Apple Intelligence distilled key information from emails into brief, one- or two-line summaries -- visible directly from the inbox without opening the messages. For ongoing email threads, the summarize function provided quick context, eliminating the need to scroll back through previous messages.
The summarization feature also extended to browsing, allowing me to condense news articles on platforms like Naver via Safari.
Apple Intelligence's Writing Tools offered real-time editing and tone adjustment tools tailored to various contexts. Whether drafting notes or composing emails, this reporter could choose to rewrite content to sound more friendly, professional or concise. For example, selecting a friendly tone would convert formal endings into a more casual form and add appropriate emojis.
Thanks to the integration of ChatGPT within the writing tools and Siri, I could access conversational AI across apps -- without needing a separate OpenAI account. This integration also enhances Siri’s capabilities, making the voice assistant significantly smarter. In quiet environments, I was able to interact with Siri via text input.
Siri also uses ChatGPT depending on the user's patterns or the type of task.
For example, when I asked it to plan a 6-day, 5-night trip to Japan, a prompt appeared asking whether I wanted to proceed with ChatGPT. When I clicked “Use ChatGPT," it provided a day-by-day travel itinerary. Siri had determined that it was better to handle the request through ChatGPT.
However, Siri still lacks some functionality with third-party apps. For instance, it currently cannot send messages through the country’s predominant messenger app, KakaoTalk, or similar platforms.
The Clean Up feature, which allows this reporter to remove unwanted objects from photos, offers functionality on par with existing tools on Galaxy devices or third-party apps. The visual intelligence function, activated via the camera control button, resembles Google Lens.
By pointing the camera at an object and selecting ask or search, I was able to retrieve relevant information via ChatGPT or Google.
The most disappointing thing about Apple Intelligence was that not all of its English-language features are available in Korean yet. The image playground -- which generates AI images by combining concepts, text prompts and people from the user’s photo library -- and Genmoji have yet to launch locally. Apple has not announced a release date for these features here.
Apple Intelligence in Korean is available with iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4 and macOS Sequoia 15.4.
By Jie Ye-eun (yeeun@heraldcorp.com)
