As we learned on Monday, Apple’s most advanced on-device AI model will require a minimum of 12GB of unified memory, meaning several Apple Intelligence-capable devices will be left out in the cold.
The most powerful on-device models includes Siri AI features like expressive voices, and more advanced dictation.
While most iOS 27 AI features will run on the iPhone 15 Pro and later, you’ll need one of the following devices for the most powerful on-device models:
- iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, or iPhone 17 Pro Max
- iPad with M4 or later with at least 12GB of unified memory
- Mac with M3 or later with at least 12GB of unified memory
- Apple Vision Pro with M5
The base iPhone 17 is excluded because it ships with 8GB of memory, as is the recently-released MacBook Neo, both fall short of the 12GB memory threshold. The standard memory requirement for Apple Intelligence has been 8GB since its introduction, so this is the first time Apple has required more memory than that for its most capable on-device features.
