New "Apple Intelligence" - AI may have just had its iPhone moment

 

Apple hopes that pairing the iPhone with artificial intelligence (AI) will cause a similar stir in the globe as it did when it coupled the iPod with a smartphone 17 years ago.

Overall, Apple has never been recognized for being the first to market with revolutionary new technologies, but it has always had a talent for timing its entry into a market.

Driving the news: Apple's strategy, known as Apple Intelligence, imagines a time when a pervasive artificial intelligence system that is fully aware of you may utilize that information to surface relevant content and take appropriate action on your behalf.

• As an alternative to the present chatbots, which are only as smart as the information you give them, Apple is developing a context engine that will be able to understand each individual consumer and the people and information that are most important to them.

Yes, but: This autumn, Apple plans to release a more basic set of generative AI capabilities. Writing assistance, picture and custom emoji generators, and a little more powerful Siri voice assistant are among the first additions.

• Apple is teasing some of the more expansive features that will be unveiled in the upcoming year, such as Siri's capacity to respond to queries by utilizing contextual cues from the screen and information gleaned from a variety of apps.

Case in point: Saying "Open the podcast my wife sent a few days ago" will allow Siri to search for recent podcast links, locate emails or other messages from the user's wife, and open the file in the podcast app.

• The question "What time does my mom's flight land?" is comparable. Siri will understand who you mean and where to look for that information.

Between the line: To make this audacious plan a reality, technology and trust are essential.

• Apple may not be developing the most cutting-edge frontier models in technology, like Google, Meta, or OpenAI, but based on what it demonstrated on Monday, it appears that the business is making more progress than many had anticipated.

• When millions of customers use Apple's AI, the true test will be how well-tuned its features are and how well-guarded against abuse and mishaps.

• This week, Apple did not provide hands-on demos for reporters, nor did it include the new AI features in the developer-only early operating system releases.

Apple really shines when it comes to trust.

• The goal of Apple Intelligence depends on having a vast amount of personal data accessible.

• Apple can reassure customers that it would not misuse its access by capitalizing on the privacy reputation it has built over the course of more than ten years.

What they're saying: "Comprehending this type of individual context is crucial for providing genuinely beneficial insights," Craig Federighi, a software executive at Apple, stated on Monday.

• "But it must be carried out correctly. It should not be necessary for you to give up every detail of your life to be kept in a cloud of artificial intelligence and examined."

Apple is attempting to make as many improvements to the gadget as it can in order to further its privacy campaign.

• Apple's apps will transfer the workload to a distant server located in its data center when they require additional processing capacity.

Between the lines: Apple guarantees that it will carry out the handoff without granting access to the inquiry to itself or any other party.

• Information is transferred to OpenAI when an Apple query is given to ChatGPT, however each time Apple will request the user's consent. Additionally, it states that OpenAI will not be able to store the data or use it to train its algorithms.

Context: Additionally, Apple is utilizing generative AI models in a limited way, primarily for understanding inquiries and finding information rather than for producing answers.

• during a follow-up conference with media.Federighi compared the genAI of today to a teenager, saying, "We are not just taking this youngster and putting him in charge of flying an airplane." 'This is your area of strength. You could do something like flip burgers."

Yes, but: To pick winners and losers in the current wave of AI adoption would be premature.

• Apple has partnered with OpenAI because it is still lagging behind in creating the largest AI models.

• Although Axios confirmed that all Apple Intelligence features, both those that run on devices and those handled in Apple's data centers, employ the company's own models, it is unclear just how wide the company's AI capabilities are in this area.

The bottom line: Apple presented an impressive, if unfinished, vision. But keep in mind that the first iPhone had some really severe restrictions as well: it could not even "copy" and "paste," operated on an extremely slow network, and did not support third-party apps.

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