New iPhone functions

“Apple Intelligence”: Cook launches AI offensive

Apple CEO Tim Cook presented the new "Apple Intelligence" at the start of WWDC.

(Bild: APA/Getty Images via AFP/GETTY IMAGES/JUSTIN SULLIVAN)

Apple is going on the offensive with the use of artificial intelligence. The iPhone and other devices are set to simplify users' lives with new functions from the fall: Summarize missed emails and short messages, create individual emoji symbols, fish out information on demand.

Apple is playing a trump card in the AI race that no rival has: With the iPhone, the Apple Watch computer watch or its Mac computers, the company has a unique presence in the lives of its customers. This gives Apple the opportunity to provide personally useful answers by accessing a wide range of user data. To emphasize how special this is, the company breaks down the common abbreviation AI (Artificial Intelligence) for its AI as "Apple Intelligence".

An example given by software boss Craig Federighi at the WWDC developer conference on Monday: A work deadline is to be postponed and he would like to know if he would still be able to make it to his daughter's theater performance. To answer this question, the software needs to know, among other things, where the postponed appointment and the performance are - and calculate the travel time based on traffic.

This is all information that could be scattered across various apps on an iPhone: Calendar, text messages, email, maps. Apple's AI model would have access to this across all systems - and should also be able to classify the data correctly.

And Apple's voice assistant Siri, which today seems rather antiquated compared to chatbots such as ChatGPT, could eventually become more helpful. For example, it will be possible to edit photos or add a friend's new address to the contact details directly from the chat app using voice commands.

Generated emojis
One of the new features is the ability to create individual emojis as you type a text. Apple calls the function "Genmoji" - because they are generated by AI.

With the help of AI, the Mail app will also display a short summary in the short overview instead of the first few lines. As "Apple Intelligence" also understands the content of emails and messages, the software can also weigh up whether they are important and should be displayed with priority.

AI functions only for current iPhones
One catch is that many iPhones currently in the hands of users do not have enough computing power for the new AI functions. It has to be one of the upcoming iPhones from this fall - or at least an iPhone 15 Pro from last year. Even buyers of the cheaper iPhone 15 are left out. For Macs, the basis is broader: it is sufficient that they have an in-house Apple M-series chip instead of an Intel processor.

However, the most important prerequisite for the new functions is that users trust Apple enough to allow the company's AI models extensive access to their data. Apple CEO Tim Cook has been emphasizing the focus on privacy and encryption for years - and thus laid the foundation for this. However, users themselves have become more suspicious following numerous hacker attacks and data scandals. Microsoft was recently heavily criticized because the company announced an AI search function for which screen recordings are created and evaluated every few seconds (see below).

More cloud in the future
So far, Apple has focused on integrating artificial intelligence into individual functions without drawing much attention to them: for example, when editing photos or suggesting words when writing short messages. Federighi said that around 200 models with machine learning were already running on previous iPhones.

The company repeatedly cited the fact that the AI runs on the devices themselves rather than in the cloud as a data protection argument. With "Apple Intelligence", however, the computing effort will now often be so great that servers from the network will have to be called in to help. Apple has developed a process with complete encryption and promises that no data will remain on the servers after processing. Apple's AI will decide on a case-by-case basis whether a task should be carried out on the device or in the cloud.

Media reports before WWDC led to much speculation that Apple was getting help from ChatGPT developer OpenAI. On Monday, however, it sounded more like Apple customers would be able to set up direct access to ChatGPT - but that the chatbot would play a subordinate role. Siri will ask the user for permission each time a request is to be forwarded to ChatGPT.

How often this will happen remained open on Monday. After all, it is clear that the range of the in-house AI software is likely to be limited for the time being. But in principle, Apple can imagine a future in which users have access to many different specialized AI models.

Musk rails against Apple
Even the controlled connection to ChatGPT triggered an outburst of anger from tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is at loggerheads with OpenAI. If the ChatGPT makers were given access to data at operating system level, he would ban iPhones in his companies such as Tesla or the space company SpaceX, Musk ranted on his online platform X. The fact that Apple was actually announcing something else did not seem to have reached him.

Direct access from Mac to iPhone
In addition to the focus on AI, there were also other announcements - after all, WWDC is traditionally there to provide a preview of upcoming software and functions. In future, it will be possible to access data and apps on the iPhone directly from a Mac computer without having to take it out.

Emergency SMS
In areas without mobile phone reception, Apple will also let iPhone users 
iPhone users to send text messages via a satellite connection. This will work for iMessage chats between Apple devices as well as for classic text messages. Both text and emojis can be transmitted. Previously, Apple had only offered an emergency call function via satellite.

Own app for password vault
With the next iPhone operating system iOS 18, it will also be possible to chat with Android users from Apple's Messages app using the encrypted RCS protocol instead of SMS. In addition, Apple's password vault, which can be used to save and fill in login data across devices, will have its own app. The function was previously located in the settings. Apple is thus competing with specialized providers.