Apple’s (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference event kicked off Monday in Cupertino, Calif. 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 into generative AI, will be deeply integrated across the company’s hardware and software products ranging from the iPhone and Mac to Mail, Messages, and Photos.
Apple is positioning Apple Intelligence as a unique offering that can understand you and your data, rather than a broad-based AI system like ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overview. Apple Intelligence will be available for the iPhone 15 Pro and iPads and Macs running Apple’s M1 series chips and newer later this fall.
The biggest changes are coming to Apple’s Siri. The original smartphone voice assistant, Siri has been in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint for years, and Apple Intelligence will offer just that. The company says the assistant will feature a new look, feel more natural, and be more responsive.
Like other generative AI-powered assistants, you’ll be able to ask follow-up questions and interrupt yourself while making requests. You’ll also now be able to speak to Siri via typed text if you don’t feel like making requests out loud and ask Siri to 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 accurate responses. Onscreen awareness will let Siri understand and take action about things on your screen. So, if a friend sends an address in Messages, you can have Siri save it for you.
Beyond Siri, your devices can now prioritize your notifications to bring up the most important notes and minimize less relevant ones. Writing tools can rewrite, write, or summarize information for you, automatically available across Notes, Mail, and a host of third-party apps. You’ll be able to create generative AI images of people, places, and animals across your apps in three different styles.
Apple says many of its generative AI models will run on-device, though some will need to access the cloud. But because Apple has traditionally eschewed 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.