When Apple Intelligence first arrived on the scene for compatible iPhones, an Apple support document revealed that it would gobble up a not insignificant 4GB of storage for the extra functionality.
Now, with the release of iOS 18.2, that has nearly doubled in just a few months. A support page on the Apple website, spotted by 9to5Mac, reveals that supported iPhones, iPads and Macs must sacrifice 7GB of storage for the extra functionality.
To be entirely fair to Apple, this storage creep hasn’t happened for no reason. The roll-out of iOS 18.2 brings a whole host of new features, including Genmoji, ChatGPT in Siri, Image Playground, Visual Intelligence, Compose with ChatGPT and more. These are all features that should make compatible iPhones more competitive with Samsung’s Galaxy AI-toting handsets.
It’s also not like Apple ever claimed that the 4GB demand would remain static. Indeed, the company specifically stated that “storage requirements for on-device Apple Intelligence models will increase as more features roll out” in the iOS 18.1 notes.
All the same, such storage creep is a worrying trend for iPhone users who opted for 128GB handsets at launch. For them, Apple Intelligence has gone from taking up 3% of the phone’s capacity to 5.5% in just a few months. For those wanting Apple Intelligence on their 64GB M1 iPad Air, the percentage rises to 11%.
We’ve seen the expected timeline for iOS 18, and while iOS 18.3 doesn’t appear to be adding much in the way of AI, the arrival of iOS 18.4 in the spring is set to add significant Siri changes which will likely make the storage demands soar even higher.
I’d rather have the extra space
The good news is that if Apple is serious about AI for the long haul, it will likely need to stop scrimping on storage space for its entry-level models. Apple Intelligence already forced the company into upping the RAM for its non-Pro handsets, and it seems likely that 256GB may become the norm sooner rather than later too.
But what about those with 128GB handsets juggling with limited storage space today? A simple answer would be to allow users to remove AI features and continue using their iPhones as they have for the past decade.
Not everyone needs or wants artificial intelligence at their fingertips 24 hours a day, after all — and I must confess I’m an AI Luddite myself. I’ve only used generative AI a handful of times out of curiosity, and I’ve found it too prone to hallucinations to make it too unreliable for research.
The photography editing features are astonishing in a technical sense, but it’s also not for me. I cling to the old-fashioned view that stitching together multiple photos for a perfect snap, removing distracting objects, or dropping yourself in a scene at the tap of a screen merely ends up distorting genuine, happy memories into something cheap and inauthentic. Give me real and imperfect any day.
In other words, if I had a compatible iPhone (I don’t — still on a 14 Pro here), I’d much rather have more free space to play with, than bloated AI features I don’t use. But while you can disable Apple AI in the settings, at the time of writing, once you’ve installed it, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to reclaim all of the space it takes up.
Hopefully that will change in time. Apple may honestly feel that AI is the future, but us non-believers should be free not only to ignore it, but to revel in the extra storage space that decision brings.
