The rumors have come true, and Apple took the stage at its annual WWDC 2024 conference to unveil its ambitious plans in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The pre-recorded presentation began with Apple executives landing at its Cupertino headquarters after parachuting from an airplane. CEO Tim Cook unveiled updates to Apple’s operating systems before discussing advances in AI and explaining that these innovations will make devices "smarter than ever".

Tim Cook announced what everyone had been waiting for: the arrival of artificial intelligence in Cupertino: Apple Intelligence (AI). New system is a generative AI that will be introduced in a beta version on the company’s latest devices this fall. Described as the next big step in personal technology, AI will offer features such as rewriting text, correcting errors, managing notifications and performing complex tasks within apps. Users can ask it to perform actions such as playing certain podcasts or retrieving shared files. Apple ensures that the system processes data locally on the device to ensure privacy.

AI computing requirements mean that the advanced features will not be available until the iPhone 15 Pro and Apple devices with the M1 chip or later. For highly complex tasks, processing will take place on Apple’s cloud servers, with privacy guarantees and independent security auditing.

 

New Siri

A significant update to Siri has also been confirmed, with improvements that will make the voice assistant more contextual and conversational. Users can now type into Siri and use ChatGPT for complex requests, increasing Siri's usefulness. For example, Siri can search for recipes via ChatGPT, asking permission for external queries.

In addition, new features have been introduced, such as Genmoji, which enables the creation of personalized emojis using generative AI; Image Playground, a feature similar to OpenAI’s DALL-E for creating images based on descriptions; and Clean Up, a feature long available on other devices such as the Google Pixel, which allows users to remove background elements from photos.