Building a deck from scratch is the part most flashcard apps make slow. Swiftflip Premium uses Apple Intelligence to give you a starting point: name a topic, choose the options and the app adds a starter set you can review and edit.
How AI generation works in Swiftflip
Open the new-deck sheet and choose Create with AI. Give the deck a name that describes the topic. “French verbs in the past tense”, “Renaissance painters” or “C++ memory management” all work. Choose the card count, style and difficulty, then generate the deck. Review the cards it adds and edit anything that needs a fix.
The intent is to remove the empty-deck problem. You still control how each card is worded and which ones to keep.
What you keep control over
AI generation gives you a starting point, not a finished study source:
- name the deck before generation and rename it later
- choose the card count, style and difficulty
- edit the front or back of any card
- delete cards that miss the point
- generate more cards when the deck needs wider coverage
Generated cards become part of your normal Swiftflip library. Spaced repetition, sync, export and Apple Watch practice all work the same way.
Add AI cards to an existing deck
You do not have to start a new deck to use AI. Open a deck you already have and choose Generate Cards to add fresh cards alongside the ones you wrote yourself. This is useful when you have built a deck of vocabulary by hand and want to extend it without retyping.
How your cards are generated
Generation runs through Apple Intelligence on your device, so your topic and your cards never reach us. Decks, cards and study progress continue to sync through your private iCloud. There is no separate Swiftflip account or hosted profile.
Swiftflip 1.16 adds a second option you can turn on. You pick which one writes your cards in Settings.
Cloud AI, coming in Swiftflip 1.16
Cloud AI generates cards on our servers instead of your device, so you can generate cards without an Apple Intelligence device.
- Premium, on iPhone and iPad first. Mac follows later.
- It is the default engine on iPhone and iPad. Swiftflip tells you before the first request.
- Switch to on-device generation in Settings at any point.
- It sends the topic, any instructions you wrote and the existing cards in that deck so new cards do not repeat them. Not your images and not your audio.
While Cloud AI is the engine, we forward that text to OpenAI to write the cards. OpenAI does not train on it and we do not store card content. Switch to on-device generation and none of this applies: nothing leaves your device and OpenAI is not involved. Read the privacy policy for the full description.
This is not in the current App Store build.
When AI is and is not a fit
AI generation is most useful for:
- starting a new topic where you do not know what to include
- expanding a deck of common vocabulary
- generating prompts for material you are about to study formally
It is less useful for personal coursework, niche research or anything where the source material is the point. For those, write the cards yourself or import them.
Get started
AI generation is a Premium feature and requires Apple Intelligence on your device. If you already have Premium, tap Create with AI for a new deck or Generate Cards inside an existing deck, then try a topic you want to learn.