Apple has finally entered the generative AI race with the announcement of "Apple Intelligence," a new suite of AI features deeply integrated into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. Revealed at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, the system brings powerful new capabilities to a revamped Siri and core applications, leveraging both on-device processing and a landmark partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT.
A New Era of Personal Intelligence
According to Apple, Apple Intelligence is a "personal intelligence system" designed to be helpful and relevant by understanding a user's personal context. The system is built on a foundation of powerful on-device generative models that handle most tasks directly on the iPhone, iPad, or Mac, prioritizing user privacy. For more complex requests that require a larger model, Apple introduced Private Cloud Compute, a system that uses secure, Apple silicon-powered servers to process data without ever storing it or making it accessible to Apple.
This hybrid approach allows the system to perform actions like organizing notifications, summarizing text, and creating images without sending personal data to the cloud. It can pull information from across different apps, understanding context from emails, calendars, and messages to complete tasks for the user.
Siri's Long-Awaited Upgrade with ChatGPT
The most significant update is the overhaul of Siri, which is now more natural, contextually aware, and capable. Siri can understand conversational nuances and maintain context across multiple requests. The biggest news, however, is its integration with OpenAI's ChatGPT.
When a user makes a request that Siri believes could benefit from ChatGPT's broader world knowledge or advanced language capabilities, it will ask for permission to send the query to the service. Apple emphasized that user privacy remains paramount in this integration:
- Users are prompted before any data is sent to ChatGPT.
- Requests are not stored by OpenAI.
- User IP addresses are obscured.
- Users can access ChatGPT for free without creating an account. Subscribers to ChatGPT Plus can also connect their accounts for access to paid features.
System-Wide AI Tools for Daily Tasks
Apple Intelligence powers a range of new features available across the operating systems. Keeping up with these platform-level AI updates can be a full-time job. Our AI Breaking Wire newsletter delivers the most important developments straight to your inbox, so you can stay ahead of the curve. Some of the key new tools include:
- Writing Tools: A new system-wide feature that allows users to rewrite, proofread, and summarize text nearly anywhere they can write, including Mail, Notes, and third-party apps.