Apple introduced Apple Intelligence at its annual WorldWide Developer Conference (WWDC), a new generative AI feature designed for highly personalized and privacy-focused experiences. Integrated across iOS, macOS, and VisionOS, this feature aims to understand users' personal contexts, including routines, relationships, and communications.
Key Features
- Personalized Experience: Apple Intelligence is designed to be intuitive, deeply integrated, and grounded in personal data and context. Apple Intelligence can rewrite text, suggest text, and summarize text. Integrated across Mail, Notes, Pages, and third-party apps.
- Privacy-First Approach: Built with privacy from the ground up, much of the data processing is done locally on the device using the latest Apple silicon. For more complex tasks, Apple employs "Private Cloud Compute" to enhance privacy.
- Enhanced Siri: The update includes significant improvements to Siri, allowing users to type queries directly into the system, moving beyond just voice interaction. Siri is now more natural, more relevant and more personal — and it has new look, including a revamped icon. The assistant pops up with a glowing light that wraps around the edges of your device’s screen. Siri will also have the ability to take action in and across apps, so you can ask Siri to “make this photo pop” and then “add this photo” to another app.
- AI-generated Images: You can now generate image through AI just chatting with Siri or through the new Photos app. Siri can now edit your photos and take action within apps based on context or request.
- AI-generated emoji: Users can create custom emojis by typing descriptions, which can be used in messages or as stickers.
- ChatGPT Integration: Apple Intelligence will natively integrate with ChatGPT, allowing Siri to access ChatGPT with your permission. This feature will be available by the end of the year for both macOS and iPhone users. IP addresses are obscured, and OpenAI won't store requests. Users can access ChatGPT for free without an account or connect their accounts for paid features.
Technical Aspects
- On-Device Processing: The system utilizes advanced on-device large language and intelligence models. According to Apple, much of the processing is done locally, leveraging the latest version of Apple Silicon.
- Private Cloud Compute: Some processing is offloaded to the cloud to handle more demanding tasks, using services that run on Apple chips to ensure data privacy.
Apple Intelligence is free for users, and will be available in beta as part of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia this fall in U.S. English. Some features, software platforms, and additional languages will come over the course of the next year. Apple Intelligence will be available on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPad and Mac with M1 and later, with Siri and device language set to U.S. English.
