After endless rumors, Apple has finally revealed how it’s upgrading the iPhone with a jolt of AI.
Apple, the largest smartphone maker in the U.S., held its annual Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday and announced “Apple Intelligence” at the event, or AI for the iPhone.
It’s also partnering with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to Apple products, starting with OpenAI’s newest GPT-4o model.
Apple CEO Tim Cook at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 10, 2024 in Cupertino, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Apple’s new AI upgrades Siri and allows the voice assistant to work inside apps to get things done. For example, Siri will soon be able to search through your photos, find a picture of your driver’s license, extract the numbers, and put it in a web form for you.
Another new feature, Genmoji, means that iPhone users can generate emojis from a written prompt on their phone keyboard.
“What’s truly unique” about Apple Intelligence “is its understanding of your personal context,” Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi said.
In one example, Apple’s new AI will be able to rank notifications on the lock screen to minimize distractions and put higher-priority notifications first.
ChatGPT in your iPhone will be able to answer prompts that Siri can’t while keeping user info and questions private, according to Apple.
Related: OpenAI’s New ChatGPT Sounds Almost Human in Latest Update
Apple’s new private cloud compute safeguard for its AI “sets a brand-new standard for privacy,” according to Federighi.
Under the standard, Apple processes AI requests locally, on devices, as much as it can; it only sends relevant data to servers the company created.
Apple says it never stores data.
This is the first time Apple has announced “profound new intelligence capabilities,” as CEO Tim Cook called it. However, Apple has already made internal improvements to one product lineup to support AI.
In May, Apple announced an all-new M4 chip, which Apple vice president of platform architecture Tim Millet called an “outrageously powerful chip for AI.”
Related: Apple Event: New iPad Pro Looks, Acts Like a MacBook Air
The chip powers Apple’s new line of iPad Pros.
iPads will also be getting a calculator app for the first time in 14 years with Apple Pencil support, Apple announced at WWDC. Users can write down or sketch out math problems on the calculator and have the app solve them.
Schedule Texts, Hide Apps
iPhone users will also soon be able to take advantage of a new software update, iOS 18.
The new iOS 18 will allow users to lock an app with FaceID on their iPhone and hide apps entirely from the home screen — plus schedule text messages to send later, and add any emoji or sticker to a text to respond.
iOS 18 also means that iPhone users can customize the home screen with new colors and place apps in new places along the screen.
Apple is officially adopting RCS (Rich Communication Services) on its iPhones, which means that Android phones will be able to send high-quality photos and videos to iPhones.
Related: How to Present Like Steve Jobs at Apple Developers Conference
A public beta of iOS 18 will come out in July, and the general public will get to use it starting in September.