Apples (AAPL) The Worldwide Developers Conference kicked off Monday in Cupertino, California, as the tech giant announced its long-awaited generative AI initiative: Apple Intelligence.
Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley has the details:
The technology, Apple’s first step toward generative AI, will be deeply integrated into the company’s hardware and software products, ranging from iPhone and Mac to Mail, Messages and Photos.
Apple is positioning Apple Intelligence as a single offering that can understand you and your data, rather than a large-scale AI system like ChatGPT or Google’s Presentation AI. Apple Intelligence will be available for iPhone 15 Pro and iPads and Macs powered by Apple’s M1 series chips and newer later this fall.
The biggest changes concern Apple’s Siri. The original smartphone voice assistant, Siri, has been in desperate need of a new coat of paint for years, and Apple Intelligence will deliver just that. The company says the assistant will feature a new look, be more natural and more responsive.
Like other AI-powered generative assistants, you’ll be able to ask follow-up questions and interrupt yourself while making requests. You’ll also now be able to talk to Siri via typed text if you don’t feel like making requests out loud, and have Siri use ChatGPT instead of Apple’s own models to make requests.
Apple says its updated version of Siri is more context-aware of Apple products, allowing you to ask questions about how different features and settings work and get specific answers. On-screen recognition will allow Siri to understand and act on items displayed on your screen. So if a friend sends an address in Messages, you can ask Siri to save it for you.
Beyond Siri, your devices can now prioritize your notifications to show the most important notes and minimize the less relevant ones. Writing tools can rewrite, redact, or summarize information for you, automatically available in Notes, Mail, and a host of third-party apps. You’ll be able to create generative AI images of people, places, and animals in your apps in three different styles.
Apple says many of its generative AI models will work on the device, although some will need access to the cloud. But because Apple has traditionally avoided forcing people to use cloud-based services when it comes to their private data, the company says it has developed a new cloud service called Private Cloud Compute.
