Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a number of generative artificial intelligence products and services during his keynote address at the company’s annual WWDC developer conference on Monday, including a deal with ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
The new tools mark a major shift toward artificial intelligence for Apple, which has seen global sales slow over the past year and has integrated fewer AI features into its consumer products than competitors.
“It needs to understand you and be embedded in your personal context, such as your routine, your relationships, your communication and more. This is beyond artificial intelligence. It’s personal intelligence,” Cook said. “Introducing Apple Intelligence.”
Apple’s new AI system includes a number of generative AI tools aimed at creating an automated, personalized experience on its devices. The demonstration showed that Apple’s artificial intelligence will be integrated into all operating systems of its laptops, iPads and iPhones, and will also be able to obtain information from applications and take actions within them.
The company also confirmed its long-awaited partnership with OpenAI during the keynote, announcing that Apple will incorporate ChatGPT technology into the responses of Siri, its AI assistant.
One of Apple’s biggest updates was a new version of Siri, which executives promised would have a “more natural, contextually relevant and personal” experience. The new Siri is capable of acting as an AI chatbot and accepting written instructions, as well as having the ability to perform actions in apps based on voice instructions. Apple has promised that Siri will be able to sift through your emails, texts and photos to find specific information based on relevant context. Apple has shown that its artificial intelligence can, for example, pick out the word “daughter” from an email and match it with a corresponding phone contact. During the demonstration, executives highlighted measures Apple has taken to protect user privacy when using the company’s artificial intelligence, such as a dedicated set of servers that power features but don’t store personal user data or device responses.
Apple Intelligence also has the ability to summarize notifications, emails and texts. A group chat, which includes figuring out travel plans, could be boiled down to a single message that tells who has booked a hotel and when they’re due to arrive, according to the demo. Meanwhile, a new image generator allows users to create unique emoji reactions, while its Image Playground feature can create more complex visuals in several different styles.
The company also announced an updated operating system for its Vision Pro headset. Only available in the US since its February release, the virtual reality device will be available in China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, France and the UK over the next two months.
Apple said it will adopt Rich Communication Services to improve messaging between iPhones and other smartphones, as well as expand customization options for iMessage. Google’s Android phones have long used the messaging protocol. Other incremental updates included a redesigned Photos app, tourist maps in Apple Maps, improvements to the Wallet app, text message customization options, and satellite texting in places without cellular coverage.
While the boom in generative artificial intelligence in recent years has led tech giants like Google to overhaul their core services, Apple has until now been reluctant to incorporate the technology into its flagship products. The company’s lack of generative AI tools had been a constant source of consternation among analysts and investors in the previous year, who expressed concern that Apple appeared to be catching up in the AI race.
As pressure mounted on Apple to provide some form of new AI offering, the company began discussing partnerships and exploring ways to update tools like Siri, its voice assistant that debuted in 2011. After Cook promised shareholders last month that Apple is making “significant investments” in artificial intelligence, Bloomberg reported that the company is finalizing a deal with OpenAI to integrate the startup’s technology into its devices.
Apple shares have rallied in recent months as investors awaited what the company would reveal. Apple has struggled this year with waning global demand for its iPhone and reported another overall decline in sales during its earnings call last month. Additionally, the company has been dogged by a US antitrust lawsuit, a canceled electric vehicle project and a lack of public fanfare for the expensive Vision Pro.
Other technology firms, meanwhile, saw their stock market value rise as they highlighted investments in artificial intelligence, with Apple rival Microsoft beating analysts’ expectations this year as its revenue and share price rose. AI chipmaker Nvidia hit a $3 trillion stock market valuation last week, overtaking Apple to become the world’s second most valuable public company.
While Apple has been reluctant to launch an AI product, it has been quietly building its AI capabilities and investments for years. It has acquired several AI startups, reassigned staff to work on AI, and is setting up an AI research lab in Zurich.
Apple’s reluctance to enter the AI game may have been influenced by a desire to maintain its privacy-focused brand. Because artificial intelligence relies on collecting large amounts of data to train language learning models, the company’s partnership with OpenAI has raised privacy concerns from some critics — including Elon Musk, who established Apple devices will be “prohibited from accessing the premises” of his companies due to privacy concerns if the ChatGPT integration goes live.
However, at a post-event press conference, Cook told reporters that Apple plans to set “a new standard for privacy in AI.” The company will release a document on the same day as the keynote that will highlight how it will “use this technology in a responsible way”, he added.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said in an on-stage discussion that the company has built most of its “Apple intelligence” offerings with its own technology and proprietary underlying models. In other words, the ChatGPT partnership primarily covers search features and improved writing tools, while most of the AI tools were created by Apple itself. Users will be required to explicitly opt-in before engaging with external AI models, such as those offered by OpenAI.
“For AI to be truly useful, it has to be focused on you,” Federighi said. “[To make] if possible, it must be constantly integrated into the experience – it must be informed by context and knowledge about you. And if he is to do that, there is a great responsibility to protect your privacy.”
Other privacy measures from Apple include a new hybrid cloud system called “private cloud compute.” The company said it aims to complete most of the processing for AI tools on the device, but will provide additional privacy protections for more complex computations that require the cloud.
Despite those assurances, pressure on Apple to provide AI-based services means the company has had to make some “tough decisions” about its “long-term focus on privacy and security,” said Ben Wood, principal analyst and CMO at CCS Insight. .
“Implementing a cloud-based AI solution is a fascinating tension that leads Apple to the same conclusion as its competitors such as Google – that today’s AI functions cannot be fully run on-device and must be outsourced to the cloud. ,” he said. “Apple will try to improve its security permissions, but it still represents a shift in approach.”