Apple’s latest weapon in the AI wars, Apple Intelligence brings generative AI and a smarter Siri to the tech giant’s most powerful gadgets.
While Apple’s recent ‘Glowtime’ event focused mostly on the new iPhone 16 range, Apple Watches and AirPods, one common thread was built-in support for AI features under the banner of Apple Intelligence.
First unveiled back at WWDC24 in June, Apple Intelligence is set to bring generative AI capabilities to Apple’s iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS 15 Sequoia later this year. Rather than go it alone, some of Apple Intelligence’s capabilities are built on a deal with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
As is often Cupertino’s way when embracing new technologies, Apple is not a Gen AI early adopter. Instead, it is following in the footsteps of device makers like Google and Samsung, software giants like Microsoft and social media behemoths like Meta with Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
What is Apple Intelligence?
Apple Intelligence is not a standalone application, but rather a set of Gen AI features built into Apple’s operating systems and available through most apps. Shying away from “artificial”, Apple dubs the feature a “personal intelligence system”.
Along with generating text and images, similar to other Gen AI tools, Apple Intelligence can perform actions across multiple apps, such as editing photos and dropping them directly into text messages.
To offer a more personalised experience, it can also draw from context – including a user’s personal information and the context of the content they’re currently engaged with – to provide more relevant answers and make it easier to search for information, photos and videos.
As part of this, Apple Intelligence boosts the capabilities of Apple’s smart assistant Siri. Instead of the familiar Siri icon, users will see a glowing light around the edge of their device screen when Siri is at work.
Thanks to Apple Intelligence, Siri will be able to tap into ChatGPT to answer some queries. The smart assistant will become better aware of personal information in order to handle contextual queries.
Siri will be able to maintain context from one request to the next, as well as follow along when users stumble over their words.
What can it do?
Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools will be available system-wide, including via third-party applications, to help users rewrite, proofread and summarise text.
It offers three preset styles – Friendly, Professional or Concise – which can be used to rewrite text in a specific tone. Like with ChatGPT and other Gen AI tools, Apple Intelligence also supports custom rewrite commands, such as “make this read like a poem”.
While Apple Intelligence can not directly compose text from scratch, text composition is possible thanks to built-in access to ChatGPT.
Meanwhile, Image Playground lets users create fun images in Apple’s apps like Messages, Notes, Keynote and Pages. The new Genmoji feature leverages AI to create emoji for any occasion, while Image Wand turns sketches into something more photorealistic.
When it comes to photo editing, Apple Intelligence underpins Clean Up for deleting unwanted objects. In addition, natural language queries can be used to search for specific photos and specific moments in video clips.
While most of Apple Intelligence’s AI models run entirely on-device, Apple’s Private Cloud Compute offers the ability to scale between on-device processing and larger, server-based models that run on dedicated Apple Silicon servers.
Which devices are Apple Intelligence compatible?
Apple Intelligence relies on the brand’s custom silicon. Along with the new Phone 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max, it will be available on the:
- iPhone 15 Pro Max (A17 Pro)
- iPhone 15 Pro (A17 Pro)
- iPad Pro (M1 and later)
- iPad Air (M1 and later)
- MacBook Air (M1 and later)
- MacBook Pro (M1 and later)
- iMac (M1 and later)
- Mac Mini (M1 and later)
- Mac Studio (M1 Max and later)
- Mac Pro (M2 Ultra)
Notably, it’s not available on the standard iPhone 15 models from last year. There’s speculation that this is because of the handsets’ comparatively lower memory count. Meanwhile, the new Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 can also summarise notifications powered by the AI features.
When is Apple Intelligence coming?
The first set of Apple Intelligence features will be available in beta in October as part of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1. It will only be available in US English to start with.
While there’s no set release date yet, Apple Intelligence will get localised English support in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK in December 2024. Additional language support including Chinese, French, Japanese and Spanish is coming in 2025.
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