Apple enters a new era with its own version of AI called Apple Intelligence

Apple has entered a new era with the introduction of Apple Intelligence – the company’s very own version if AI – that will work across iPhone, iPad and Mac and offer personalised and useful results.

Apple called it “AI for the rest of us”.

 Announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple Intelligence will incorporate generative models and combine them with your device’s knowledge of you and work across apps to deliver results and accelerate tasks while still respecting your privacy.

In fact, privacy was one of the main pillars of Apple Intelligence with most things happening on the device.

And if Apple Intelligence does need to use the cloud for more complex tasks it will be through a platform called Private Cloud Compute to ensure none of your data is stored.

The pillars Apple outlined for the requirements for Apple Intelligence were: Powerful, Intuitive, Integrated, Personal, Private.

Apple Intelligence will be part of iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia with devices powered by A17 Pro and the M family of chips.

“We’re thrilled to introduce a new chapter in Apple innovation. Apple Intelligence will transform what users can do with our products — and what our products can do for our users,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

“Our unique approach combines generative AI with a user’s personal context to deliver truly helpful intelligence. And it can access that information in a completely private and secure way to help users do the things that matter most to them. This is AI as only Apple can deliver it, and we can’t wait for users to experience what it can do.”

Apple Intelligence will include large language models to make tasks faster and easier along with new a new writing tool called Rewrite to suggest different versions of the text, proofread and condense ideas across the most used apps including Mail, Notes, Keynote, Pages and Safari.

Rewrite will look at sentence structure and grammar and suggest improvements and help users write to suit the occasion whether it’s a job application or a thank you note.

Apple Intelligence will also come into play in Mail with not only Rewrite features but also Priority Messages to sort email to down to the most urgent.

And instead of seeing a preview of an email in your inbox it will now be replaced with a summary so you can understand what’s in the message at a glance.

Notifications will also be sorted according to priority with the most important, as judged by Apple Intelligence, placed at the very top.

In Phone and Notes, it will now be possible to record, transcribe and summarise audio.

Users will also be able to create images, emojis and gifs using Apple Intelligence.

A new feature called Image Playground is a generative AI tool that takes categories like themes, costumes, accessories, and to help you define an image.

It’s also possible to choose someone from their personal photo library to include in the image.

Each image can be styles as a picture, drawing or animation.

And you’re no longer limited to the emojis you already have. Apple Intelligence makes it possible to create a genmoji – an emoji to match the moment or create a genmoji of a friend based on images of them in your camera roll.

Apple Intelligence can also comb through your images and videos when looking for specific memories such as “Maya skateboarding in a tie-dye shirt” or “Katie with stickers on her face”.

It will also pick out specific videos and images based on an event and create a Memories reel and match it with a song from Apple Music.

Siri has also become even more powerful and even more deeply integrated so it can offer more contextual responses based on what’s on the screen and information from other apps.

It can provide responses based on information that’s already on the device so users can ask questions like: “Play that podcast that Jamie recommended,” and Siri will locate and play the episode, without you having to remember where it was mentioned.

You could ask, “When is Mum’s flight landing?” and Siri will find the flight details and cross-reference them with real-time flight tracking to give an arrival time.

Apple Intelligence will also be integrated with ChatGPT to access its capabilities, and this will include image generation and document understanding capabilities.

In its response, Siri will say it is consulting ChatGPT to provide your answer.

Apple Intelligence will be free for users with iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia which will be released in September.

* Stephen Fenech travelled to Cupertino for the Worldwide Developers Conference as a guest of Apple