AI has been the name of the game for the tech industry, and as expected, Apple’s WWDC 2024 includes a healthy dose of this tech. While the Cupertino-headquartered tech behemoth is somewhat late in the AI game, its latest announcements in this year’s developer conference might just help it catch up with its competitors.
At the heart of Apple’s push into AI is Apple Intelligence. According to the company, the generative models behind Apple Intelligence will be made available across iOS, iPadOS and macOS. It takes image generating to a different level – it can create generative photos based on your photo library, similar to some other platforms. There are three styles available – Sketch, Illustration, and Animation, and is supported in apps across the system. It can also delve into your apps and execute tasks on your behalf, as well as perform actions based on natural commands. It will work on the iPhone 15 Pro or later.
As mentioned earlier, Apple Intelligence is built upon LLMs, which will allow it to perform tasks like read notifications, prioritize tasks, and even have new systemwide writing tools that will rewrite, proofread, and summarize text. The company also focusses on privacy – it will leverage cloud-based models on special servers using Apple Silicon to ensure that user data is private and secure. “We want to extend the privacy and security of your iPhone into the cloud,” Apple SVP Craig Federighi said.
“Most importantly, it has to understand you and be grounded in your personal context, like your routine, your relationships, your communications, and more,” Tim Cook, Apple CEO, noted at the WWDC. “And of course, it has to be built with privacy from the ground up together. All of this goes beyond artificial intelligence. It’s personal intelligence, and it’s the next big step for Apple.” Users can even create images (and even emojis) with generative AI and Apple Intelligence
Apple’s popular voice assistant – Siri – also gets a healthy dose of AI. Courtesy of the new AI enhancements, users will now be able to use Siri via text, and it can even correct your statements in real time. Users can talk to Siri more naturally, and it will be able to understand contexts even better. It can even take action in and across apps, while third-party apps will be able to tap into some of Siri’s enhancements. And if this is not enough, new photo editing features are set to make their way to an AI-enhanced Siri, allowing it to apply photo enhancement features in Apple Photos (amongst others).
Apple continues to ride on the AI wave, and is now looking to tap into ChatGPT’s capabilities as well. The company also announced that Siri can tap into OpenAI’s ChatGPT when needed – the voice assistant will ask if you want to share your question with ChatGPT and then will return suggestions from the chatbot. This, Apple notes, will be made available on iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia later this year.
And if this is not enough, Apple is also introducing a host of new AI-powered writing tools, which will be available system wide across third party apps. The Mail app will summarize emails and show them in preview, while the Notes app gets an Image Wand feature. For those who are wondering, Apple notes that it can turn rough sketches into a cleaner image using Image Playground.
