Report lifts the curtain on Apple's AI initiative before Monday's Keynote
Apple is just days away from previewing its AI initiative at WWDC 2024. The Keynote will start on Monday, June 10th, starting at 10 am for those of you on the West Coast of the U.S. which is 1 pm on the East Coast. AI has become the two biggest letters in tech over the last year and Apple is looking to play catch up as other phone manufacturers like Google and Samsung have already promoted the AI features on their latest flagship phones.
Get ready to hear all about "Apple Intelligence" on Monday
According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple has already decided to brand the AI features used on its devices with the name "Apple Intelligence." The company is known for coming up with catchy names for some of the functions and capabilities of its products such as Face ID, FaceTime, ProMotion, Back Tap, and others. Using a new brand with the initials AI is typically Apple and is a smart move. Gurman writes that AI will take up half of the Keynote on Monday.
Apple's teaser for WWDC was telling us to expect a huge AI makeover for Siri
Get ready to hear plenty about Apple Intelligence since Apple plans on adding AI into as many apps as possible with the goal of helping Apple device users improve the quality of their lives by making things easier for them to achieve. Instead of positioning AI as a way for customers to be blown away by technology, "Apple Intelligence" appears to be about getting things done faster and easier.
Having said that, AI will not be forced on Apple's customers and the latter will be allowed to opt-in to receive these features. AI capabilities be offered as a Beta and users will need to own the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or later models. The entire iPhone 16 series, including the non-Pro models, will support "Apple Intelligence" which will be coming to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. At WWDC, new operating system updates will also be announced for Vision Pro, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.
Summarization might be the first big AI feature found on many Apple apps
A new partnership with OpenAI will give Apple device owners a ChatGPT-style AI chatbox to use, but as we've mentioned over the last few weeks, summarization is a key AI-based feature that you will hear about on Monday. Safari will provide a summary of the content seen on websites viewed by the user on the browser and the same feature will be found in other apps such as the Mail, Notes, and Messaging apps. A new feature will give iPhone users a chance to view notifications they missed while doing other things besides staring at their iPhones.
"Apple Intelligence" will also help users bang out AI-generated responses including emails and messages. The tone of such replies can also be changed to make them more professional. For the first time, Siri will be able to run features and controls inside apps through commands spoken by the device user. Through Siri, an iPhone user will be able to have a photo enhanced, get a summary of a news story, delete an email, and more. Eventually, users will be able to string together multiple action requests with one command. This feature will at first be available only with Apple's own apps. Eventually, third-party apps will be included, but not until next year at the earliest.
As we noted the other day, the Mail app will be getting a huge update and Apple device users will be able to create custom emoji that will represent words being typed in real time. Apple will also use AI to enhance its own Voice Memos app and make it a challenger to the top-rated Recorder app on Google's Pixel devices. The Photos app will also get an AI makeover that will allow users to edit images and even remove some of the people and things in a picture similar to the Android Magic Eraser feature.
It's a whole new world for Apple and for Apple customers. the company has been known to come late to a tech party using snazzy new names to wow the public. Still, there is a real sense of excitement here as the iPhone, arguably the most popular consumer product in the history of tech, is about to get its biggest software refresh since the first iPhone was announced in January 2007.
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