New features and OpenAI partnership signal shift for tech giant, facing pressure to match rivals’ AI advancements
Tim Cook, Apple CEO, unveiled a range of generative AI products and services, including “Apple Intelligence” and a partnership with ChatGPT creator OpenAI, during his keynote at the annual WWDC conference on Monday.
These new tools represent a significant shift towards AI for Apple, which has experienced slowing global sales over the past year and has integrated fewer AI features into its consumer products compared to its competitors.
“AI needs to understand you and be grounded in your personal context, like your routine, relationships, communications, and more. It’s beyond artificial intelligence—it’s personal intelligence,” said Cook. “Introducing… Apple Intelligence.”
Apple’s new AI system includes a variety of generative AI tools designed to create an automated, personalized experience on its devices. The demonstration highlighted how this AI would be integrated throughout the operating systems on Mac laptops, iPad tablets, and iPhones, with the ability to pull information from and take action within apps.
The company also confirmed its highly anticipated partnership with OpenAI during the keynote, revealing that ChatGPT technology will be integrated into the new version of Siri. Executives promised a “more natural, contextually relevant, and personal” experience. The revamped Siri will function as an AI chatbot, accept written instructions, and perform actions within apps based on voice prompts. Apple also assured that Siri will be able to search through emails, texts, and photos to find specific information based on relevant context.
An Apple executive demonstrated that the company’s AI could identify the word “daughter” in an email and link it to the corresponding phone contact. Apple Intelligence can also summarize notifications, emails, and texts. For example, a group chat about trip planning could be condensed into a single message indicating who booked a hotel and when to arrive. Additionally, a new image generation tool allows users to create unique emoji reactions, and the new Image Playground feature can generate complex visuals in various styles.
The Vision Pro headset’s new operating system was also unveiled by the business. Within the next two months, the virtual reality device—which was solely accessible in the US since its release in February—will be made available in China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom.
Apple declared that it would implement Rich Communication Services to improve iMessage customisation possibilities and improve texting between iPhones and other handsets. This communications protocol has long been used by Android phones. A revamped pictures app, trekking maps in Apple Maps, adjustments to the Wallet app, enhanced messaging customisation choices, and the capacity to send texts via satellite in locations without cell tower connectivity are among the other upgrades that WWDC released.
Apple Intelligence: Innovator or Latecomer?
Even with the explosion of generative AI, industry leaders like Google have redesigned their core offerings. But up until today, Apple had held off on incorporating this technology into its flagship goods. Over the past year, investors and analysts have expressed concern over Apple’s slow adoption of generative AI, believing the company is slipping behind in the race for artificial intelligence.
As the demand on Apple to release a new AI product grew, the business began looking for collaborations and methods to upgrade products like Siri, its voice assistant that was released in 2011. After Cook promised investors last month that Apple will make large AI investments, Bloomberg revealed that Apple was almost finalising an agreement with OpenAI to integrate the startup’s technology into its products.
As investors eagerly awaited Apple’s most recent announcements, the company’s stock has increased recently. Nonetheless, the business has had difficulties this year, such as waning demand for iPhones worldwide, which resulted in an additional revenue drop that was revealed on an earnings call last month. In addition, Apple has had to contend with a US antitrust case, the effort to develop an electric vehicle being cancelled, and the public’s lack of enthusiasm for the pricey Vision Pro headset.
By putting artificial intelligence efforts first, other IT companies have seen an increase in their stock market worth in the interim. This year, Microsoft, Apple’s rival, outperformed analysts’ predictions with increases in sales and share price. Last week, AI chipmaker Nvidia surpassed Apple to become the second most valuable public corporation in the world with a $3 trillion stock market valuation.
Over the years, Apple has been progressively improving its artificial intelligence capabilities and investments, even in spite of its reluctance to introduce a high-profile AI product. It has taken over a number of AI firms, reallocated staff to concentrate on AI development, and is setting up an AI research facility in Zurich.
Apple may be reluctant to enter the AI space because it wants to uphold its reputation as a privacy-focused company. Some opponents have expressed privacy concerns regarding Apple’s relationship with OpenAI, as AI relies largely on large data sets to train language models. For example, Elon Musk voiced similar concerns when he said that Apple devices will be “banned from the premises” of his firms if the ChatGPT connection is deployed because of privacy issues.
Following the event, Cook told reporters in a press briefing that Apple plans to create a “new standard for privacy in AI.” On the same day as the keynote, he said, the corporation would release a document detailing its ambitions to “apply this technology in a responsible way.” Apple officials emphasised the measures taken to protect customers’ privacy when utilising the company’s AI during the earlier demonstration. These measures included the usage of a specialised set of servers that would enable the capabilities without retaining users’ personal data or on-device responses.
Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, disclosed during a conversation on stage that the majority of the “Apple Intelligence” capabilities were created by the business utilising its own technology and proprietary core models. He clarified that while Apple develops most of its AI capabilities domestically, the ChatGPT cooperation mostly relates to improved writing tools and search functions. Before utilising external AI models, such those offered by OpenAI, users will need to expressly consent.
Federighi stressed how crucial it is to build artificial intelligence with the user in mind. He said, “AI has to be focused on you in order to be truly useful.” He clarified that in order to do this, context- and user-specific knowledge-driven AI must be seamlessly included into the user experience. He also emphasised how important it is to safeguard user privacy when using this strategy.
“Private cloud compute” is a new hybrid cloud technology that is part of Apple’s privacy initiatives. The business intends to conduct AI mostly on-device, but it will take extra privacy precautions for more complicated computing that requires the cloud.”
CCS Insight’s principal analyst and CMO, Ben Wood, pointed out that, in spite of Apple’s assurances, the company has had to make some “tough decisions” about its “long-standing focus on privacy and security.”
According to Wood, “Implementing a cloud-based AI solution creates an intriguing tension where Apple is reaching the same conclusion as competitors like Google—that fully running today’s AI features on-device is not feasible, and those elements must be outsourced to the cloud.” He continued, “Apple will emphasise its security credentials, but this represents a shift in approach nonetheless.”
