Apple finally joined the AI train and announced "Apple Intelligence" at WWDC 2024 as the name for its line-up of AI features for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and more. Users will now get new Siri, Genmoji, Image Playground, ChatGPT, and more to enhance their user experience and potentially improve their digital lifestyle across their devices.
Interestingly, Apple managed to avoid using the term "artificial intelligence," as they have always done when talking about their machine learning features. And as usual, they give their new product a name to "own" it and not directly connect it to what other companies have out there. Hence the name, Apple Intelligence, which can be abbreviated to AI as well.
So what is Apple Intelligence?
"Apple's goal is to design powerful personal products that enrich people's lives by enabling them to do what matters most as simply and easily as possible." And so their approach is to develop a more personalised AI. Apple Intelligence is designed with privacy at its core, Apple claims.
Apple Intelligence will allow Apple devices to create language and images, carry out in-app actions, and understand personal context. For it to understand personal context, though, it needs more access to one's privacy—messages, photos, notes, and even calls. And that, however, is a big concern for most people. Granting a company so much access to their privacy and allowing them to process them. No one wants a data breach, and Apple knows this.
To provide an AI that is personal without risking compromising user data, particularly sensitive ones, their approach is to bring the AI to your phone and make it process everything on-device, rather than sending everything—personal data and requests—across and risking data breaches and making users very uncomfortable with their product. For this reason, only the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max and Mac PCs with the A17 Pro chip or any of the M-chip series will be able to use Apple Intelligence.
There will be complex requests that the local Apple Intelligence will not be able to process very effectively, and so Apple introduced Private Cloud, which will allow users to use server-based Apple Intelligence "privately" without allowing Apple to store or access the data. And the company claims the system is open enough for anyone to verify their claims.
Siri just got a makeover
Many Apple users have been increasingly using Siri in their everyday lives since its launch, with Apple now getting 1.5 billion requests per day. With Apple Intelligence now, Siri just got smarter and way better at being a virtual assistant.
Siri now has richer natural language understanding capabilities, such that even when you stumble in your speech, it'll still understand you just fine and process your request. And it also now maintains conversational context, where it remembers previous conversations and makes recalls to process your requests better and more efficiently.
If you can't speak to Siri, perhaps you need to be quiet where you are. You can now type to Siri and have it "work for you," just as it would when you speak to it. Very handy. Alternating between text and voice is seamless, too.
Ever gotten stuck on how something works on our iPhone and need to ask a friend or search for how to do it on the web? Well, that may still happen, but you now have Siri to help you find and learn how things work on your device. It now knows a lot more about the features and settings on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. So, go on to ask Siri, "How can I write a message now and have it delivered tomorrow?" and Siri will teach you how to use Apple's Deliver Later feature.
Another feature coming with Siri is "on-screen awareness." You see, you need an assistant that can see from your perspective, as that'll allow them to perform much better and do what you really want. Siri is now more aware of what's on your screen and can simplify tasks and make things way easier for you. For example, you can ask Siri to add an address that's in your message with a friend and add it to their contact card." Which also brings us to yet another feature, In-app Actions.
Not only is Siri more aware of what's on your screen, but it can now perform actions across apps. You will be able to say, "Show me a photo of my last outing with my friends," and Siri will search for a photo in your photo library that matches your request and show it to you. You can even ask it to edit the photo for you by saying things like, "Make it pop."
Creating your own emojis and more AI for images
If you are not sure of the right emoji to use in a chat, you can now simply create one with Apple Intelligence using Genmoji. What's more interesting is that you can even use images of people to create new emojis.
Image Playground allows you to create images, and you can choose from a range of themes, costumes, accessories, places, and more. In a few seconds, Apple Intelligence can create an image for you with very simple prompts and preview it before sending it to friends or saving it. And it's instant.
There is also Image Wand, which will allow you to create images from sketches by circling them, and there is Clean Up, which will enable you to remove things and people from photos and use Apple Intelligence to clean them up nicely.
Apple integrates with OpenAI to use ChatGPT
Apple admits that some of its GPT models are so good that they have to integrate with OpenAI. For some of your requests, Siri will determine if ChatGPT has good ideas for them. It'll ask for your permission, forward your request to ChatGPT directly, and have it process it. Siri can also do the same with your photos and requests about them. You will be able to use ChatGPT for free without needing to log in.
Siri will ask you if you'd like it to use ChatGPT for your request or process it on its own, though. And ChatGPT subscribers will be able to link their accounts and access paid features.
It is interesting to see Apple work with another company to provide some of their features to users, which tells us now that there could be more of that in the future.
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