Apple Unveils Apple Intelligence, Brings ChatGPT to Siri 

Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled Apple Intelligence, the tech giant’s long-awaited AI reboot, at WWDC 2024. Apple Intelligence will be available in beta this fall, and it includes a handful of features that will shape the iPhone, iPad, and Mac experiences in numerous ways.

Parallelly, Apple also gave Siri, its currently-limited voice assistant, a significant generative AI overhaul. The company promised the feature would be built with safety at its core, along with highly personalized experiences.

“Most importantly, it has to understand you and be grounded in your personal context, like your routine, your relationships, your communications, and more,” CEO Tim Cook noted. “And of course, it has to be built with privacy from the ground up. All of this goes beyond artificial intelligence. It’s personal intelligence, and it’s the next big step for Apple.”

The company has been pushing the feature as integral to all of its various operating system offerings, including iOS, macOS, and the latest, VisionOS.

“It has to be powerful enough to help with the things that matter most to you,” Cook said. “It has to be intuitive and easy to use. It has to be deeply integrated into your product experience. Most importantly, it has to understand you and be grounded in your personal context, like your routine, your relationships, your communications, and more, and of course, it has to be built with privacy from the ground up. Together. All of this goes beyond artificial intelligence. It’s personal intelligence, and it’s the next big step for Apple.”

SVP Craig Federighi added, “Apple intelligence is grounded in your personal data and context.” The feature will effectively build upon all of the personal data that users input into applications like calendars and maps.

As reports from the event surface, it is said that the system is built on large language and intelligence models. Much of that processing is done locally and utilizes the latest version of Apple silicon, the company stated. “Many of these models run entirely on devices,” Federighi claimed during the event.

Given the limitations of these consumer systems, Apple will add private cloud computing to its offering. To enhance privacy for personal data, the backend will use services that run on Apple chips.

Simultaneously, Apple Intelligence includes the biggest Siri update since its inception. The company says the feature is “more deeply integrated” into its operating systems.

Siri is no longer just a voice interface, as users can now type queries directly into the system to access its gen-AI capabilities.

App Intents, meanwhile, brings the ability to integrate the assistant more directly into different apps. That will start with first-party applications, but the company will also be opening up access to third parties. That addition will significantly improve what Siri can do directly. This enhancement will also open up multitasking in a profound way, allowing a kind of cross-app compatibility.

By integrating Apple Intelligence into most of the company’s apps, the ability to help compose messages inside Mail (along with third-party apps) or just utilize Smart Replies to respond will be enabled.

Apple is extending this feature to emojis as well, calling it Genmoji. The feature uses a text field to build customized emojis. Apple Intelligence will be rolling out the latest versions of its operating systems, including iOS and iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and VisionOS 2, for free.

Further, Apple also announced a partnership with OpenAI that brings ChatGPT to Siri. The GPT 4.0-powered feature utilizes that company’s image and text generation. The offering will give users access without having to sign up for an account or pay a fee, unless they need a premium subscription.