WWDC ‘24: Apple Intelligence announced

Apple Intelligence was introduced at WWDC 2024, which is a personal intelligence system for iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

This system combines the power of generative models with personal context to deliver relevant intelligence for users. This is deeply integrated into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.

From understanding languages to creating images, it takes action across apps with context to simplify and accelerate workloads. Below is a summary of what Apple Intelligence offers.

Writing Tools

Apple devices now come with brand-new system-wide Writing Tools. Users can rewrite, proofread, and summarize text in a handful of areas. This is inclusive of Mail, Notes, Pages, and other third-party apps.

We also have Summarize, where users can select text and have it recapped in different forms. It’s insanely useful if you need a digestible paragraph, bulleted key points, a table, or a list.

Image Playground

Apple Intelligence also brings Image Playground to the fold, where communicating and expressing are made more fun. Users can use this to create playful images from three different styles (Animation, Illustration, or Sketch) in seconds.

Image Playground is easy to use, built into a handful of apps like Messages while also having a dedicated app.

Flexible Genmoji Creation

The new system brings emojis to a new level, with users able to create original Genmoji to express themselves. Simply type a description, and your Genmoji’s good to go with additional options.

Users may also make Genmoji of friends and family based on their photos. Similar to emoji, Genmoji can be added inline to messages or shared as a sticker or reaction in a Tapback.

New Features in Photos

With the new Photos app, searching for photos and videos have become easier with Apple Intelligence. Natural language can be used to search for specific photos. Just input a prompt like “Little John moving into his new home” see quick results!

As for videos, searching for specific clips have greatly improved with the ability to find the relevant moment immediately. In addition, a new Clean Up tool can identify and remove distracting objects in the background of a photo. Likewise, it does not alter the subject at all.

There’s also the new Memories feature, which lets users create stories by giving prompts. Apple Intelligence will pick out the best photos and videos based on this.
It then crafts a storyline with chapters based on the photos, arranging them into a movie with its own narrative arc.

As with all Apple Intelligence features, user photos and videos are kept private on devices. These will not be shared with Apple or anyone else.

Siri’s New Era

With Apple Intelligence, Siri becomes more akin to the Apple devices’ system experience. With richer language-understanding capabilities, Siri is more natural, contextually relevant, and personal.

Siri can now aid users in simplifying and accelerating daily tasks. If users stumble over words, Siri helps immensely while maintaining context from one request to another.

You can either type or use your voice to communicate with Siri with whatever feels right from the user’s end. Siri also comes with a brand-new design with an elegant glowing light that wraps around the edge of the screen when Siri is active.

Siri can deliver intelligence tailored to an individual user and their on-device information. For example, users can ask to play a podcast that a friend recommended.

The user doesn’t have to remember whether it was mentioned in a text or email, because Siri will find it instantly.

You can even ask when your family member’s flight is landing! Siri will find the flight details and cross-reference them with real-time flight tracking to give an arrival time.

A New Standard for Privacy in AI

Apple also set a new standard for privacy in AI with Private Cloud Compute. This has the ability to flex and scale computational capacity between on-device processing.

This is inclusive of larger, server-based models running on dedicated Apple silicon servers. When requests are routed to Private Cloud Compute, data is not stored or made accessible to Apple. It is only used to fulfill the user’s requests.

ChatGPT Integrations Across Apple Platforms

Lastly, Apple is now integrating ChatGPT access into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. Users will now be able to access its expertise, along with its image- and document-understanding capabilities without jumping between tools.

Siri can also tap into ChatGPT’s expertise when advised. However, users need to confirm prior to sending queries. This also goes with documents and photos, with Siri presenting the answer directly.

ChatGPT will also be available for Apple’s system-wide Writing Tools, which help users generate content for anything they’re writing about. With Compose, users may access ChatGPT’s image tools to generate images in a variety of styles to complement their writing.

Privacy protections are also integrated for users accessing ChatGPT. IP addresses are obscured, with OpenAI not storing their requests. OpenAI’s data-use policies apply for users who decide to link their account.

Users can access this for free without creating an account. Further, ChatGPT subscribers can connect their accounts and access paid features right from these experiences.

Availability

Apple Intelligence is free for users, and will be available in beta as part of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia this year. Additional 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.