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Apples iOS 26 for iPhone got off to a rough start when it was finally released to the public in September of last year. Its new Liquid Glass design language remained unpolished in many areas, and the operating system harbored a fair amount of bugs. But since iOS 26.0 debuted, Apple has released three major updates for it, further polishing the interface and adding new features. And soon, Apple will update iOS 26 once again with the release of iOS 26.4. Its a release that is set to not just eliminate bugs and enhance the details of Liquid Glass, but is also set to add some significant new features to your iPhone. Heres whats coming, and when you can get iOS 26.4. What new features are coming to iOS 26.4? Apple has been beta testing iOS 26.4 since last month. Originally, the software update was rumored to include the companys revamped Siri, powered by Googles Gemini LLM. However, Siris AI revamp has been absent from all iOS 26.4 betas to date, so it looks like a truly useful Apple digital assistant is still a ways away. But that doesnt mean iOS 26.4 doesnt have any new features. Quite the contrary. Besides your normal user interface polishes and bug fixes, iOS 26.4 is set to include some major upgrades to its media apps, notes 9to5Mac. Those upgrades include: AI-powered music playlist creation: iOS 26.4 will add a feature to the Music app called Playlist Playground. The feature allows you to generate music playlists from natural-language text descriptions. So you could instruct the Playlist Playground feature to make a playlist of 80s rock ballads under five minutes long, and the Music app will generate a playlist based on your prompt. Podcasts app video overhaul: Apples Podcasts app has supported video podcasts for some time. But in iOS 26.4, its video capabilities are getting a major upgrade. Now you can quickly switch between the audio and video versions of a podcast. This feature will be great for those times when you are watching a video podcast, but then suddenly need to be on the movesoon youll be able to easily switch to the audio version of the podcast, ensuring you can still enjoy it when your eyes are needed on other things. Redesigned album and playlist interface: Also in the Music app, Apple has redesigned the look of the interface that you see when displaying playlists or albums in full screen. In iOS 26.4, the Music app will now tint the entire screen based on the album art color scheme, giving each playlist and album its own unique look. And thats not all: iOS 26.4 will add numerous small refinements and additions across the operating system, including new emojis, new Ambient Music widgets for your Home Screen, automatic activation of Stolen Device Protection, and more. iOS 26.4 beta: Download it now While Apple hasnt released iOS 26.4 to the general public yet, it has released four betas of the software to developers and public beta testers. And if you are in any of those two groups, you can download the latest beta of iOS 26.4 onto your iPhone today. To download the developer beta, youll need to be a member of the Apple Developer Program. If youre not a developer, but still want to try out the new software early, you can join the Apple Beta Software Program for free and get access to public betasincluding the iOS 26.4 betatoday. Of course, the usual warning applies: betas are buggy, and in rare cases, they can cause data loss or otherwise harm your phone. So always proceed with caution if you decide to download a beta. iOS 26.4 final release: Download it later this month If a beta isnt your thing, youll have to wait until Apple releases the final version of iOS 26.4 to the public. Thankfully, you probably wont have to wait too much longer. Apple generally has a 5-6 beta development cycle for iOS point upgrades like iOS 26.4. Apple released the first iOS 26.4 beta in mid-February, which means the final public version of the beta is highly likely to be released between mid-March and the end of the month. Once Apple releases the final version of the software, youll be able to download iOS 26.4 right to your iPhone using the devices Software Update feature in the Settings app.
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OpenAI confirmed on March 6 that it is delaying the rollout of adult mode in ChatGPT, a feature that would give verified adults access to less-restricted content. The company first announced plans to begin age-gating users last year but has now pushed back the launch twice. Segregating adult users from minors could help in some of OpenAIs legal and revenue challenges, but nailing the technology may not be easy. Adult mode had been expected this quarter and still is, just later than originally planned. OpenAI referred Fast Company to a comment it gave to Alex Heaths Sources newsletter saying it was pausing the feature to focus on improvements to ChatGPT, including gains in intelligence, personality improvements, personalization, and making the experience more proactive. (It also told Axios it needs more time. We still believe in the principle of treating adults like adults, but getting the experience right will take more time, the company said.) OpenAI first hinted at the feature last October in an X post from CEO Sam Altman responding to questions about ChatGPTs safety for underage users. As we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our treat adult users like adults principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults, Altman wrote. Adult mode depends on OpenAIs new age-prediction and verification system, a homegrown AI model that estimates a users age based on prompts and media generated with tools like Sora. OpenAI said in January it had begun rolling out the technology globally within ChatGPT. When the system detects a user may be underage, it restricts things like violent content and romantic role-play. The company also uses a third-party verification platform called Persona, which allows users to confirm their age if the AI system places them in the wrong category. But accurate age prediction and verification isnt easy, and using it to age-gate chatbot users is a relatively new idea. How, for instance, can an AI model distinguish between a 16-year-old in high school and a 19-year-old in college when the two talk to ChatGPT about similar things? “You can imagine . . . if you input anything that looks like a homework question, ChatGPT flags you as a minor, and then you’re automatically in the minor bucket, says Alissa Cooper, executive director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute, a tech policy group. That would pretty seriously constrain the service for college students or people who might just happen to have asked a question that looks like a homework question.” Naturally, some younger users will try to trick the age-prediction model into thinking theyre adults. There’s not really a way to prevent circumvention regardless of the architecture or the system design, Cooper says. So there’s this balance between locking things down to try to prevent circumvention, and allowing a full-featured experience for users who are age appropriate for whatever that experience is meant to be. One of Coopers main concerns is that the world outside OpenAI wont know how well the system is performing. And, so far at least, OpenAI isnt sharing much information about its system. I think it’s correct to be skeptical, Cooper says, adding that she believes companies should provide enough transparency about how their age-verification systems are tested so that independent experts can evaluate whether they actually work and examine the data used to estimate the ages of potentially hundreds of millions of users. OpenAI was put on notice last year when it was twice sued by people claiming that earlier versions of ChatGPT had led an adolescent loved one toward suicide. This set the stage for the company first applying more guardrails to its models for all users, then attempting to cordon off a safe experience for younger users. With younger users safely segregated, OpenAI could loosen or remove some content restrictions for adult users, the thinking goes. That adult mode could become a real selling point, and right now ChatGPT could use one. ChatGPT, which has 800 million weekly active users, once faced little real competition among AI chatbots. ChatGPT still has the most users, but competition has heated up with Googles improvement of its Gemini chatbot, and with Anthropics Claude gaining more mainstream name recognition. Not only is OpenAI under pressure to fend off those rivals, but its also under pressure to increase revenue from the chatbot to help offset the massive expenditures it plans to make in new data centers over the next five years. Signing up millions of new adult users to that experience would not only increase OpenAIs subscription revenues, but it could mean millions more highly engaged eyeballs to look at advertisements (the company said in January itll soon start showing ads to some of its U.S. users). So I think it’s segmentation of the user base in multiple directions, says Cooper. Its keeping minors away from experiences that nobody wants them to have, but also being able to offer adults experiences that are truly adult-oriented that some adults want to have.
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AI disruption and geopolitical upheaval are forcing business leaders to make high-stakes decisionsfast. Accenture CEO Julie Sweet shares what she’s hearing from her 9,000 clients, and the hard-won advice she’s giving them. Sweet reveals why AI proficiency is now a requirement for promotion at Accenture, why she’s doubling down on entry-level hiring amid the automation wave, and she unpacks the hidden power of “leader-led learning. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. Accenture works across 120 countries, 9,000 clientsyou’re in every industry. You have this unique visibility into how organizations and leaders are navigating what is really a chaotic, fast-moving environment. Are there questions that you’re hearing particularly often right now? Well, Bob, it’s interesting if I just start with Iran, because I’m getting a lot of questions, particularly in Europe, where if you think about a potential energy crunch, it’s expected to hit harder in Europe than, say, the impact on the U.S. Everyone believes that this environment, where energy is a risk, is just their new norm. And actually, there’s more optimism because if you compare this to 2022, when the war in Ukraine started, Europe is in a much better position from a resilience perspective. And it’s a theme that we’ve been seeing for quite some time. I got the same questions even a couple of months ago when we had this whole issue around tariffs and imposing them, which is that CEOs are really just expecting the unexpected. It’s being built in, and that’s why resilience is such a big theme. There are also big questions continuing on AI, et cetera, but I wanted to address the latest, which is the impact of the Iran war. When I talk to CEOs right now, there’s this sense that some of them seem almost frozen. They’re waiting for clarity. And I know you’ve encouraged the opposite: Don’t take cover; take chances. How do you know when to act and when to wait? The reality is, as a CEO you can’t bake anything into your plan, simply because so much is unknown. And that’s where transparency really matters, being able to say, “Here’s what we know. Here’s what we don’t know.” And then we’re making our action plan with those things in mind. So when you think about when you know to act or not act, in my view you’re always acting. It’s intentional decisions. It’s an action to say, “Because I don’t know this, I can’t alter my plans.” One of the biggest risks right now is even less about the impact on the economy from what’s going on in the Strait of Hormuz and energy. The bigger risk that many companies are talking about is, do we have a cyberattack or an attack on critical infrastructure that spins out of that? And for that, there are actions you can take, because we’re helping clients look at their cyber resilience. This has already been a big growth area for us because AI itself has increased the attack surface. When you think about what the risks are, you can’t really tell what’s going to happen on the energy front. But knowing what you do know, what you don’t know, and whether there are actions that can be takenand then actingmatters. Alongside all this geopolitical activity, there are also the technological shifts that we’re experiencing. You made a bold move last year where you merged a bunch of divisions into a single unit that you call Reinvention Services around AI. You’re coming off your biggest-ever quarter of revenue growth in new business. We see businesses that are not tech businesses that may not be getting the return on investment from their AI that they had expected or hoped for. Does it work in some places and not others? Are there industries and functions that are more fit for AI than others? Or is it more about culture and commitment? Well, in some ways it’s going to be all of the above. So first of all, we have to remember the technology, while changing fast, is still really early. And there’s a lot of actual value that companies can get before advanced AI. So let me give you an example. We work with a pharma company that takes drugs to market, and there’s a process that, once the drug is approved, involves lots and lots of regulatory work. So what you write to explain it to the physician takes a long time. We’ve said . . . that you could actually shorten that. Instead of it being months, it could be much faster if you changed the process to be standardized, if you kept your data in one place. None of that requires generative AI or advanced AI, but for most companies, they haven’t done that. So when we worked with [this company], advanced AI was the catalyst because it enables you, if you have all the standardized processes, to actually create the content faster. But the first piece always could have been done and hadn’t been done. And so much of the work that we’re doing is actually work where companies are saying, “Okay, wait a minute. Before I spend the money on advanced AI, I should clean up my fragmented processes. I should standardize things. I should not have as many people in middle managementcompletely apart from agentsbecause why would I spend money to create an agent to replace a manager that I shouldn’t have in the first place?” Is part of the hope that the motivation for not having done this is, “Oh, the agent or AI will come in and do this for me. I can skip a layer, save money.” And that’s the silver bullet. And if I’m hearing you right, you’re like, “Yeah, maybe not.” Yeah. I think there was this view at the beginning where companies thought, because it’s so easy, are they just going to do it all? Do I just ask this model, and this model is going to tell me how to change my company? One hundred percent, that is not it. The models don’t know how to change a company. And if you spend money on your current structure just replacing parts of it, you’re at best going to get incremental value. The real value is to actually reinvent everything you do. And that reinvention doesn’t start just with advanced AI, but with a lot of really basic lessons where companies haven’t had the will to fix things. I tell CEOs every day: In three years, you should be able to [answer], What did I use AI to make possible that was impossible before? Because if the only thing you’re doing is incrementally improving how you’re operating, you’re not going to get the biggest value. The biggest value is in the core operations of a companythings you’re going to be able to do with asset manageent in any industrial company, things you’re going to be able to do with the grid in utilities. The tech isn’t completely there yet. It’s still error-prone. That’s why everybody’s tracking things like how long the tech works and the memory piece of it. So where you get value today is anything with customers, because those are short interactions. The tech has to continue to improve, and the strategy has to be, “I’m going to use this tech to do something I couldn’t do before.” There’s this phrase, “AI-first.” You’ve described Accenture as an AI-first company. It’s something a lot of other players aspire to but struggle to implement. Is it hard to be AI-first? What does it mean? First of all, it is hard. And the reason it’s hard is that it requires your leaders to understand what AI does. And this is so different from the digital era. Moving to the cloud and stuff, a lot of it was plumbing. So as a leader, you didn’t have to understand it because it was being handled by the tech folks. To be AI-first, you have to say, What can AI actually do? So you have to understand things like, wait a minute, it has to have a certain amount of memory to be able to do something. You have to understand what it’s actually able to be accurate about. And then think about your business to say, “Where can I get a big enough return for using something at this cost?” It starts with leaders having to understand technology in a totally different way. When ChatGPT first emerged in November 2022, the people who received the most training initially were my top 50 leaders, because I knew that if they didn’t understand the power, they would not be able to help us transform how we’re delivering our services and what our clients could use it for. So leader-led learning is a huge unlock. And then AI-first is asking yourself, Is this something that AI could do?
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