A year after the commercial release of the Vision Pro mixed reality headset, Apple is making progress adding Apple Intelligence, with visionOS 2.4, available now in developer beta in English with consumer release scheduled for April. The AI boost adds Writing Tools, which allows text composition “from scratch using ChatGPT,” as well as Image Playground and the custom emoji app Genmoji. It also integrates Spatial Gallery, a new Vision Pro app for the iPhone that includes a discovery mechanism for curated 3D movies and a remote-viewable Guest Mode for mobile. Additional features and languages will be added throughout the year.

Media outlets were critical of Apple for waiting so long to add AI to its most advanced consumer product — which with a starting price of about $3,500 is also among its most expensive (a new Mac Pro starts at about $7,000).

CNET calls deeper integration with iPhones and iPads a step in the right direction, conceding that visionOS 2.4 offers “a foot in the door toward more AI getting added over time.”

“Apple Intelligence might be the flashiest new feature, but it’s not likely to be the most meaningful yet,” writes CNET. “The AI extras launching in this wave don’t include any camera-enabled Visual Intelligence multimodal features like those Google Gemini will flex on Android XR.”

The 2.4 upgrade “instantly helps better position the spatial computing platform against the upcoming Project Moohan headset, a mixed-reality device from Google, Samsung, and Qualcomm that promises to put Google Gemini at the center of the experience,” reports TechRadar.

The in-development headset was teased by Google in December with the announcement of Android XR and confirmed by Samsung at Galaxy Unpacked.

In addition to the enhanced AI Writing Tools, which provides rewriting and proofreading as well as ChatGPT-powered wordcraft from scratch, Vision Pro also gains Smart Reply in Messages and Mail, identifying questions and suggesting relevant replies, “so Apple Vision Pro users can easily respond to texts and emails with just a few taps,” Apple explains in its announcement.

Other new AI-powered Vision Pro features include Image Playground, a free image generation app powered by Apple Intelligence. VisionOS 2.4 also includes support for Priority Messages in Mail, Mail Summaries, Image Wand in Notes, Priority Notifications in Notification Center, and Notification Summaries, while natural language photo search “makes it even easier for users to find a specific photo, album, or a moment in a video just by describing it.”