Apple’s (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference event kicked off in Cupertino, California on Monday, with the tech giant unveiling its highly-anticipated generative AI initiative, “Apple Intelligence.”
Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley has the details.
The technology marks Apple’s first step towards generative AI, which will be deeply integrated across the company’s hardware and software products, from iPhones and Macs to Mail, Messages and Photos.
Apple is positioning Apple Intelligence as a unique service that can understand you and your data, rather than a broad AI system like ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overview. Apple Intelligence will be available on iPhone 15 Pro, iPads, and Macs with Apple’s M1-series chips and later this fall.
The biggest change is coming to Apple’s Siri. The original smartphone voice assistant has been in desperate need of a refresh for years, and Apple Intelligence will give it just that: The company says the assistant will have a new look, feel more natural, and be more responsive.
Like other generative AI-powered assistants, you can ask follow-up questions or interrupt yourself during a request, and if you don’t want to make a request out loud, you can also speak to Siri with typed text, or ask Siri to make your request using ChatGPT instead of Apple’s own model.
Apple says the updated version of Siri is more aware of the context of your Apple products and can give you accurate answers when you ask it about how different features and settings work. On-screen recognition allows Siri to understand what’s on your screen and take action on it. So if a friend sends you an address in a message, you can have Siri save it.
Beyond Siri, the device can now prioritize notifications to surface the most important notes and minimize the less important ones. Writing tools allow you to rewrite, write, or summarize information, which is automatically available in Notes, Mail, and a host of third-party apps. Across the app, you can create AI-generated images of people, places, and animals in three different styles.
Apple says that while many of its generative AI models run on-device, some require access to the cloud. But Apple has traditionally avoided forcing users to use cloud-based services when it comes to personal data, so the company developed a new cloud service called “Private Cloud Compute.”
Read more about the new announcement here.
