We’ve learned from Tim Cook’s comments and countless reports that Apple is working on AI features for all of its devices and platforms. And we’re almost certain that the technology giant will unveil it during the opening keynote of WWDC 2024.
Now, though, we have an idea of how Apple will be branding the AI features – and no, it won’t be artificial intelligence or “Absolutely Incredible,” as Greg Joswiak, Apple’s SVP of Marketing, teased in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, it will be called “Apple Intelligence,” which certainly has a nice ring to it. It’ll apparently be the central location to opt-in to the new features built into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS 15. As predicted, it will likely be all about integrating AI functionality into current apps and services, ones that someone could use daily and provide value.
As Gurman notes, “the company is less focused on whiz-bang technology — like image and video generation — and instead concentrating on features with broad appeal.”
These will likely become summarization powers for navigating a crowded inbox or getting the gist of a webpage on the fly. Similar to Samsung’s Galaxy AI or Google’s Gemini feature set, they will extend to summarizing notes, automatically transcribing voice recordings, and even providing a simple digest of notifications.
In Messages, suggested replies should get an upgrade, and Siri will seemingly get the equivalent of a new brain, hopefully making it much more useful. The upgrade could integrate a large-language model to let the virtual assistant control functions and features within apps and multi-step queries. Bloomberg’s latest reporting also notes that Apple will partner with OpenAI and that its tools will be used to power some features.
The report notes that “Apple Intelligence” features will be entirely opt-in and not turned on by default – additionally, they may be labeled as “a beta version.” This hint suggests that Apple plans to improve them over time and potentially add additional features.
It seems you’ll need a Mac or iPad with an M-Series chip or newer. For the iPhone, it will reportedly be supported on forthcoming models introduced in 2024 as well as the iPhone 15 Pro or 15 Pro Max. The A15 Bionic or later will likely be the requirement, but it will be interesting to see if it’s needed for all features or just specific elements.
Like other services, the processing will either be on a device or cloud-based computing; the latter would be a change for Apple, which always focuses on users' privacy and security. To that point, the report notes that WWDC will focus on what “precautions” Apple is taking, such as “security features on the chips that it’s using in its data centers,” and that user profiles based on customer data will not be built.
With either processing route, it’s clear that privacy will be front and center, and Apple will use it to differentiate itself from competitors. It could also help push more folks to actually opt-in to Apple Intelligence, and that, paired with actually useful features that are viewed as helpful, could help to turn the tide here. After all, useful upgrades to applications and tools we use daily can help speed through workflows and make tasks easier.
We’ll have to wait and see what Apple unveils at WWDC 2024’s kickoff and how it positions AI, err, Apple Intelligence. You can see the five things we expect Apple to unveil, including a round-up of all of our news leading up to the kick-off at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST on June 10 (3am AEST, June 11).
If you’ve been waiting for a Calculator app for iPad, it seems this is the year. VisionOS 2.0 will also bring more environments to Vision Pro, and we'll also apparently get new Mac, iPhone, and iPad wallpapers, a dedicated app for managing passwords, and the ability to create emojis on the fly.
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