Just a few days before Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC 2024) kicks off, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has delivered his final round of party-spoiling details. The biggest takeaway: Apple will call its long-rumored artificial intelligence play “Apple Intelligence.” (Leave it up to Apple to find some way to redefine the term “AI.”) Don’t expect the company to lean into generative AI features as much as competitors. According to Gurman, Apple’s AI capabilities will focus on features with “broad appeal” — something I read as being more practical than creating psychedelic images on demand.
Apple Intelligence will be powered by a combination of the company’s technology, as well as OpenAI’s. Bloomberg also notes the AI capabilities will be mostly opt-in, and we can expect Apple to tout its security capabilities since it will also rely on a combination of on-device and cloud connectivity. Previously, Apple has bragged about the iPhone’s on-device security being more effective than competitors like Android.
As previously rumor, Gurman says that Siri will be able to control apps more directly using Apple Intelligence. You could potentially tell the assistant to summarize an article or edit a photo in a certain way. Notably, Apple reportedly plans to open up this capability to third-parties, and allow you to string together multiple commands — but those features won’t be available until next year.
As for other features, it sounds like Apple is trying to bake in AI smarts where it can. You’ll reportedly be able to create AI emojis that you can customize with text strings, and you can expect to see AI transcriptions in Voice Memos and more AI photo editing capabilities.
