Apple AI announced with ChatGPT integration

Apple has announced its artificial intelligence play, promising the power of generative AI combined with users’ personal context while preserving privacy.

Called “Apple Intelligence,” CEO Tim Cook introduced the system on Monday during the company’s annual World Wide Developers Conference.

Cook said their system wasn’t simply AI. It was “personal intelligence”.

During the presentation, Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that Apple Intelligence can understand and create language and images, and take actions.

Federighi said that underpinning this is an understanding of the user’s personal context, while protecting their privacy.

“Apple Intelligence is a personal intelligence that sits at the core of iPhone, iPad, and MacOS,” said Federighi.

An example of this functionality in action is iOS prioritising notifications to ensure the most important ones are at the top of your list.

“Apple Intelligence also powers brand new writing tools,” Federighi said.

These tools are available system-wide, in first-party and third-party apps, and allow users to rewrite, proofread, and summarise text.

Image generation is currently limited to three styles: sketch, illustration, and animation. This also works across apps.

In addition to the generative capabilities people have come to expect of AI tools, Apple announced a fresh take on issuing voice commands to its system software.

Apple said that having access to a user’s personal context allows more complex actions to be chained together.

Examples of such commands include, “When should I leave to pick up Mom from the airport?”

However, giving an AI access to contacts, photos, emails, and other personal data comes with a raft of privacy concerns.

Here, Apple’s stance was clear.

“You should not have to hand over all the details of your life to be warehoused and analysed in someone’s AI cloud,” said Federighi.

Federighi explained that many of the machine learning models Apple Intelligence uses run entirely on-device.

“It’s aware of your personal data, without collecting your personal data,” he said.

However, when larger models are needed than the device can execute, Apple offloads the task to one of its new Private Cloud Compute servers.

Apple’s own chips power these servers, and the company has committed to allowing independent third parties to inspect the code these servers run.

“Your data is never stored or made accessible to Apple,” Federighi said.

Craig Federighi, Apple senior VP of software engineering, announcing Apple Intelligence

Apple acknowledged that users sometimes want more general knowledge or domain-specific language models for certain tasks.

For that reason, they have made it possible to integrate and access these models from Apple Intelligence.

The first major external model that will be available is ChatGPT.

Federighi said Apple users will not need an OpenAI account and that their requests and information sent to ChatGPT are not logged.

Users who pay for a ChatGPT subscription will also have access to their premium features on their Apple devices.

“You’re in control over when ChatGPT is used and will be asked before any of your information is shared,” said Federighi.

“We also intend to add support for other AI models in the future.”

He said that Apple Intelligence will be available to try out in US English “this summer”, meaning before the first Monday in September.

It will be launched to users in beta “this fall”, meaning sometime before Black Friday (29 November 2024),

Some features and additional languages will launch over the course of the next year, and ChatGPT support is slated for later in 2024.