Apple Intelligence has some pretty demanding entry requirements, meaning Apple’s foray into AI isn’t yet for everyone. You’ll need a recent, powerful iPhone or iPad to join the club. But that’s not all – since the latest update, you’ll also need a whopping 7GB of free storage to install these features, up from the 4GB required at launch late last year.
The jump reflects the growing demands of Apple’s latest generative AI features introduced in iOS 18.2, including Image Playground, Genmoji, and more. These features rely on resource-intensive models to function, hence the large downloads.
Unlike many rivals, Apple stores and runs its AI models locally to enhance responsiveness and avoid sending sensitive data to the cloud. However, this privacy-first approach comes with a cost: increased storage consumption.
For context, even Apple’s latest iPhone 16 range comes with just 128GB as standard. (You can get more, but it’s not cheap). With iOS itself taking up around 13GB of that, it means Apple Intelligence will take up around 6% of your total available storage space. That’s similar to the requirements for extremely high end games or roughly 35,000 photos.
If you don’t have 7GB free, you’ll miss out on the latest AI updates. You can check how much storage Apple Intelligence is currently using by navigating to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
The increased space requirement is likely being used to improve the quality of Apple Intelligence features, which are a bit of a mixed bag so far. But if Apple wants AI to become the standard for users, it ought to increase the baseline storage capacity of its flagship devices and/or lower the price tiers for iCloud storage.
As it stands, 7GB feels like a big ask for something that is set to become a standard part of iOS – and it will only grow, with Apple planning to expand its AI offerings even further this year with iOS 18.3 and beyond.