For Fanboys, AI means Apple Intelligence

That Apple has ceded ground on the artificial intelligence (AI) front to rivals Google and Microsoft is a fact. Which is what made us expect that Tim Cook’s announcements around AI would mean something useful and not merely flashy. At its WWDC 2024, the company did a flashy turn that made even the flashiest appear dull. 

They unveiled Apple Intelligence, the much-awaited ecosystem-wide push into generative AI and now expect us to refer to it in abbreviation as AI, nothing less! Remember “Thanda Matlab Coca Cola” or photocopy becoming Xeroxing? Usually, when companies go flashy at the beginning, users get the impression that they’re merely ad libbing around nothing. 

But, we will reserve our judgment on this point and instead check out what exactly was on offer. For starters, Apple has promised that the AI (what else to call it?) will have safety at its core and highly personalized experiences. In other words, it would not be a one-size-fits-all phenomenon that most Gen AI efforts have been till date. Let’s wait and see. 

AI with PI is what Tim Cook has prescribed

Tim Cook says: “Most importantly, it (AI) has to understand you and be grounded in your personal context, like your routine, your relationships, your communications and more. It has to be built with privacy from ground up together. All of this goes beyond artificial intelligence. It’s personal intelligence, and it’s the next big step for Apple.” 

In just a few sentences, Cook has given us a headline for the ages: “Apple focuses on AI with PI” – talk about creativity oozing from every pore at Apple. Small wonder then that Apple actually brought ads that crushed creative instruments under a hydraulic press. Anyways, coming back to the AI, Apple would be pushing it as integral to all its operating systems. 

Cook thinks the system has to be powerful enough to help users with that matter most for which it needs to be intuitive and easy to use (remember idiot-proofing?) and integrated within the product experiences. And, all of this leads Cook to picture a universe where AI is combined with personal intelligence. And it sits well with Apple’s philosophy of all the Gen AI magic actually happening on the device and not over a cloud for others to break into. 

Of course, the system is based on large language and intelligence models, with the latter coming from personal data and context that users add to their applications like Maps, Calendars etc. The processing would happen locally via Apple’s latest chip. Apple SVP Craig Federighi says many of these models would run on the device. 

Apple’s AI also powered by ChatGPT?

In case you’re wondering what exactly Apple’s own AI would do differently, the answer is that it wouldn’t. Which is why the company announced a deal with OpenAI under which ChatGPT would be plugged into Siri. The GPT 4.0 will use the company’s image and text generation that users can access without signing up or paying a fee. Of course, you need a subscription to access the premium variety of GPT 4.0. 

The above paragraph would be enough to let our readers know that the WWDC event didn’t really focus on the consumer facing smarts. Instead, Apple was telling us how developers can work with their AI to come up with some smart solutions that would be very personal, very safe and very much hand-held. 

Personalized AI that works safely across devices 

However, there are bound to be limitations as some of the heavy lifting would happen over the cloud, which is why Apple is adding Private Cloud Compute to the offering. This makes sure that the back-end uses only services that run on its chips and personal data remains just that. Personalization appears to be the buzzword now. 

And this came out quite strongly in the first big update to Siri that began talking to us about a decade ago. Apple says its AI upgrade makes Siri “more deeply integrated” into its operating systems. Of course, there’s a bit of flashiness here as Siri’s familiar icon is replaced by a blue glowing border surrounding the desktop while in use. The 1970s version of sci-fi? 

However, Siri now has more to offer than a voice interface. Users can now type queries into the system to access its Gen AI smarts. Maybe, Apple has finally accepted that Siri wasn’t smart enough to understand location-based pronunciation challenges. Both Apple and Google had deployed scores of researchers to study these variations for some years now. 

App Intents integrates the Assistant to the core

Moving on, the company announced App Intents that seeks to integrate the assistant more deeply into different apps. It will start with first-party applications, but Apple is opening up access to third parties too, thus paving the way for improving the sort of things that one can ask Siri to do over your personalized Apple ecosystem. 

This shift is definitely eye-catching to the discerning as Apple is paving the way for multitasking that would be the result of cross-application compatibility. Use cases might be in the works but what comes immediately to mind is the ease with which Siri could potentially schedule a meeting and mark the location by accessing an email. 

Cook also promised that their AI would be integrated deeply into Apple apps that would allow users to compose messages within an email or use Smart Replies to respond. Those of us using Gmail would know that such a feature has existed for some time now and Google actually built some more smarts using Gemini.

There’s Genmoji, Image Playground and Image Wand

If you thought flashiness had its ultimate moment with Apple’s own version of AI, there is something more. The company announced Genmoji – a feature that uses a text field to create customized emojis. This is something users can create on the fly while responding to their friends or colleagues though one wonders how it helps a conversation if one creates a Genmoji on the fly that actually makes the interlocutor see red. 

Apple also announced Image Playground – an on-device image generator – that is getting built into apps such as Messages, Keynote, Pages and Freeform. The company is bringing a stand-alone Image Playground app to its iOS and also opening it up to others by offering APIs that developers can access. 

Finally, there is Image Wand, a tool that comes loaded into Apple Pencil, that allows users to circle text and create an image thereof. In some ways, Google led the way with its Circle to Search, but Apple has narrowed the focus only to images. It goes without saying that the search feature has been built for text, videos and images. 

Apple says users can do more with its AI

The company is promising more natural language searches with the apps even as the Gen AI models potentially make it easier to create slideshows within Photos using natural language. So, it is quite the package that Apple came out with during the WWDC on the intelligence front. Now, we just need to wait and watch how AI takes on AI. 

For the moment though, AI of the Apple kind will roll out across operating systems and would be available free for updates. However, when it comes to devices, the feature will be limited to the iPhone 15 Pro and M1 Mac and iPad devices. This is Tim Cook saying that if you want real AI, pay for it by upgrading your devices unlike others who merely ask for a subscription.