Digital Economy

Apple Intelligence: first apps to exploit local Ai arrive

With iOS 26, Apple brings artificial intelligence directly to iPhones, focusing on privacy and convenience

25 September 2025

3' min read

The voice assistant Siri, in its most advanced version announced in 2023, is not yet available. The sleeping elephant continues to occupy Apple's room, but Cupertino recalibrates users' expectations with a less noisy and far more useful approach in everyday life: the opening of Apple Intelligence to third-party developers. The Cupertino company's stated aim is to 'harness the power of Apple Intelligence', emphasising two central needs: to reduce infrastructure costs for developers and, above all, to strengthen the protection of user privacy by preventing sensitive data from being sent to external servers.

The Foundation Models framework: three lines of code for AI

This was made possible by the launch of the Foundation Models framework, which allows developers to integrate artificial intelligence features directly into devices, without the need for an Internet connection and the Cloud. Thanks to native support for Swift, Apple's proprietary programming language for iOS app development, it takes just three lines of code to exploit the potential of the model, a simplicity much appreciated by developers.

The first IOS apps to take advantage of Apple's local AI

With the release of iOS 26 for all users came the first applications integrating features based on Apple's local artificial intelligence models. Analysis of these early examples reveals incremental improvements that nevertheless transform the user experience significantly.

Among them is MoneyCoach, a financial management app that uses local templates for two seemingly trivial but tremendously useful features: it analyses your spending by showing automatic insights, such as whether you spent more than average on groceries for that particular week, and it automatically suggests categories and subcategories for a spending item for quick entries. Nothing revolutionary, but enough to save dozens of taps and precious minutes every day.

LookUp, the language learning app, has added two new modes using Apple's AI models: a learning mode that uses a local model to create examples corresponding to a word, and a function to generate a map view of a word's origin. Features that enrich the learning experience without disrupting it.

Particularly interesting is the case of Tasks, which allows users to talk about certain things and uses the local model to break them down into various tasks without using the Internet. A practical demonstration of how local AI can be more reliable and immediate than cloud AI.

The advantages of 'small but functional'

The advantage of the approach according to Apple is obvious: processing remains on the phone, response times are drastically shortened and many functions are also available offline. Admittedly, local models are less powerful than cloud-based ones and cannot cope with complex tasks like the OpenAI or Google platforms. But the approach opens up interesting perspectives in several areas. Family budget management applications, which are very popular in Italy, could integrate real-time suggestions without sharing banking information with external servers. In education, language study or digital teaching could exploit models that also work offline, which is particularly useful in areas with limited connectivity. In healthcare, local data processing could make it easier to comply with GDPR and privacy regulations. At present, there are no Italian apps that have claimed to use Apple's framework, but the fact that Italian is among the supported languages makes a rapid adoption in our market plausible.

The numbers of a winning strategy

Apple grossed over $10 billion in fees from the App Store in the US alone in 2024, and opening up AI to developers represents a new monetisation frontier. The idea is simple: 'premium' AI features in apps, with Apple keeping its percentage as it already does for digital purchases. A strategy that seems to be working. With iOS 26 now available to all users, the number of apps integrating Apple Intelligence grows daily. More importantly, these apps are proving that artificial intelligence does not have to be 'generative' to be useful to users.