For better or worse, AI is here to change how you use your Apple devices. During its June 10 WWDC keynote, Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence, a new artificial intelligence system for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. This new technology is powered by on-device processing and new private Apple silicon servers, which Apple has dubbed, “Private Cloud Compute.” With Apple Intelligence, you’ll have access to AI tools that will help you improve your writing, create artwork, communicate more clearly with Siri, and so much more.
Improve Your Writing with Rewrite
A new system-wide feature, Writing Tools, allows you to use Apple Intelligence to rewrite, summarize, and organize anything that you write. Whether it’s an email, a text, or notes, you can ensure you always include the most relevant information and deliver it all in the right tone.
Users can open the Writing Tools menu and select Proofread to have Apple Intelligence review what they’ve written and make corrections. You can also change what you’ve written to sound more friendly or professional, depending on the recipient. Automatic summaries and bullet points are also available. Writing Tools can even be used to create a table based on what you’ve written.
Keep Your Device Organized
Apple Intelligence also offers new ways to keep you organized. The Mail app will place your most important messages, like our free Tip of the Day newsletter, at the top of your inbox, and provide you with summaries of each message.
Apple Intelligence can summarize and sort your notifications as well. Priority Notifications is a new AI-powered feature that will bring the most pertinent notifications to the forefront, ensuring you never miss an important text, phone call, or email. Your notifications will also be summarized to provide you with key information.
Building on this handy new feature, the new Reduce Interruptions Focus mode uses AI to silence all but the most vital notifications. For example, if your significant other sends you a text about a change of plans, your iPhone will send you an alert that this text might be urgent.
Let Your Imagination Run Wild
No AI tool would be complete without image generation. Apple Intelligence lets you express yourself by creating artwork in one of three styles: Animation, Illustration, or Sketch. You can use the new Image Playground app to generate images from your descriptions. Plus, you can specify a person from the People & Pets album to base the image on.
Image Playground is also fully integrated into apps. So, if you want to add an image to a note or a text message, you can easily create it and drop it in without leaving the app. Image Playground will even offer suggestions based on context, so if you and a friend are chatting about what it might look like for your cat to cook dinner, the AI will offer suggestions like, “cat” and “chef.” Or if you made a sketch in the Notes app, you can have Image Playground generate a more detailed drawing.
But that’s not all. Apple Intelligence also includes a feature called Genmoji. This handy tool uses AI to create entirely new emojis based on your prompts. So, if you ever wanted an emoji of your best friend dressed like a racecar driver or a squirrel as a DJ, you can make it happen.
Photos Managed by AI
A new tool in the Photos app uses Apple Intelligence to erase distracting objects in the background of your photos. This means that if you ever need to remove people who photobombed your vacation photos, all you have to do is draw a circle around them, and Apple Intelligence will do the rest.
You can also create Memory Movies in the Photos app by telling Apple Intelligence what you want to see and what kind of music you want. It will then create a slideshow, complete with a basic plot structure, matching your parameters.
Siri Is Now Smarter than Ever
With the power of AI, Siri is now one of the smartest assistants around. Siri will now understand you even if you stumble over your words, and will now follow along with subsequent requests. So you can ask Siri about the weather for a location and immediately follow up with a request for directions, without having to specify the location again.
The digital assistant will also provide responses catered to you. Can’t remember the name of that book that your friend recommended? Just ask Siri, and you’ll be shown the text your friend sent with the name of the book. Siri even works across apps, so if you ask for photos from a recent vacation, you’ll be taken to the Photos app with your most recent photos displayed; or if you want to know when your flight leaves, Siri can grab the details from the relevant app and show them to you. Siri will also offer smart replies to emails and messages.
System-Wide ChatGPT Integration
ChatGPT is now natively integrated into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. If you ever need extra help that Apple Intelligence can’t provide, you can easily pull up ChatGPT anytime, anywhere, and enter a prompt to generate or spice up writing, proofread text, generate images, and more.
How Secure Is Apple Intelligence?
AI is a tool that always requires extra processing power. While Apple has said that most Apple Intelligence requests can be processed on-device, other more complex requests will require communication with the cloud. That’s why Apple has created dedicated Apple silicon servers to provide private and secure communication between your devices and the cloud. Apple calls this Private Cloud Compute.
While we don’t have many details on how exactly this works quite yet, Apple assures users that all requests with Apple silicon servers are completely private and no user data is ever stored. According to Apple, independent experts can even examine the code on these servers to confirm that all Apple users and their data are safe.
When Will Apple Intelligence Be Available & Who Can Use It?
Apple Intelligence will be available this fall with the launch of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. Additionally, due to the necessary processing power, Apple Intelligence will only be available on devices with an A17 Pro chip or newer, as well as devices sporting an M1 chip or newer. As of this writing, that means these new AI features will be exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, along with iPads and Macs with M1, M2, M3, and M4 chips.
