Yep, by using the terms intelligence, and occasionally Apple Intelligence and not AI[1], they get to talk about these features in a way that don't trigger an automatic mental gag reflex. The fact they cottoned on to this 2 years ago is actually pretty impressive.
"Mental gag reflex" is exactly right. I'm running two different instances of Claude Opus 4.8 on xhigh right now, and I'm absolutely fine with it because that's what _I_ want to do.
AI features on my toothbrush, toaster, refrigerator, doorbell, washing machine, word processing software, TV, whatever, without my actually asking for them first are THINGS I DO NOT WANT, and adding those features to those devices will cause me either to have go to great lengths not to use them, or - much more likely - just not to buy them at all if I can.
Is it impressive though?
I wrote this in another thread recently: AI is a technology, not a product. Consumers don't care about technologies, they care about products.
This is pretty elementary stuff. SV has a propensity for conflating technology and products, I'll give you that, but Apple's product management has always been relatively good about this kind of thing.
AI's not a technology, though. LLMs are a technology. AI is a marketing term.