The Emacs manual says
• The AUCTeX package provides more advanced features for editing TeX and its related formats, including the ability to preview TeX equations within Emacs buffers. Unlike BibTeX mode and the RefTeX package, AUCTeX is not distributed with Emacs by default. It can be downloaded via the Package Menu (*note Packages::); once installed, see *note The AUCTeX Manual: (auctex)Top. Distribution question: Is there a reason why it would not be possible to bundle the latest available version of AUCTeX with Emacs, say from ELPA?