tech

On June 10th local time, Apple held its 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). After the updates to VisionOS, iPadOS, iOS, MacOS, watchOS, and other systems were all unveiled, artificial intelligence became the main character of the finale.

Not only did this conference reveal Apple's latest layout in the field of artificial intelligence, namely the "Apple Intelligence" service, but it also announced a cooperation with OpenAI to deeply integrate ChatGPT into its products and services.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the conference that although the company has been using machine learning technology for many years, the emergence of large language models has brought new opportunities to enhance the capabilities of Apple's products.

Therefore, Apple officially launched the "Apple Intelligence" strategy, fully integrating artificial intelligence technology into the iOS, iPadOS, and macOS systems to improve services and enhance user experience.

This marks that Apple has also followed competitors such as Microsoft and Google, officially entering the era of artificial intelligence, hoping to re-establish its leading position in this highly watched new field."Apple Intelligence" Services Fully Penetrate

The term "Apple Intelligence" refers to a collective name for technologies based on machine learning, large language models, and generative artificial intelligence, as used by Apple. It covers a variety of application scenarios, ranging from notification management to writing assistance, including:

Advertisement

Optimizing the sorting of notification priorities to reduce unnecessary disturbances.

Transforming into a writing assistant tool that can summarize text, adjust tone and style, or provide suggestions for revisions.

Generating personalized avatars or images for contacts in the address book.

Performing cross-application tasks on behalf of users, such as retrieving files shared by specific individuals or playing podcasts sent by family members.

Allowing users to create brand new Emoji (Genmoji).With the enhancement of "Apple Intelligence," Apple's Siri has also been upgraded, and its icon has been refreshed. Its conversational abilities have been further improved, allowing it to communicate with users more naturally and smoothly. Users can also interact with Siri by typing, not just through voice.

Apple has stated that "Apple Intelligence" will enable Siri to have "screen awareness," capable of understanding the content on the screen and taking action. For example, when someone sends you a new message, Siri can perform actions such as updating a contact's address.

At the same time, Siri will be able to perform "hundreds of" operations within different applications, such as setting timed text messages, handling photos, and writing emails. This allows it to perform complex tasks entirely through voice commands, such as obtaining photos of friends at a specific location or wearing specific clothing, and making these photos "more prominent" as requested.

In terms of image generation and processing, Apple has introduced a brand-new Genmoji feature, driven by generative artificial intelligence. Users only need to describe the expression they imagine in their minds with words, and they can customize a unique Emoji.

In addition, the Photos app has also been improved, supporting more accurate image search and editing functions, such as erasing obstacles or people in photos.Apple has stated that, in order to protect user privacy, some artificial intelligence functions will run on the device itself, without collecting or storing personal data. For complex requests that require cloud assistance, Apple has developed a "private cloud computing" system.

This system only sends the minimum amount of relevant data to Apple's own servers for processing, does not retain data, and allows external experts to review the server code to ensure privacy commitments.

It is worth mentioning that the abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence is AI, and the abbreviation for Apple's Apple Intelligence happens to be AI as well, but Apple did not emphasize this point as a marketing gimmick at the conference. In fact, the term AI only appeared once during the conference.

Collaborating with ChatGPT, a strong partnership is formed.On the basis of launching "Apple Intelligence," Apple has also chosen to collaborate with OpenAI to further bind its systems with artificial intelligence applications. According to the agreement, Apple will deeply integrate ChatGPT into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS systems, providing users with powerful artificial intelligence assistance capabilities.

Specifically, users can ask questions to Siri through voice commands. If Siri deems it necessary, a confirmation box will pop up to send the question to ChatGPT for processing and return the answer. Users can also send images to ChatGPT to obtain relevant information descriptions.

All writing tools in Apple's systems will support ChatGPT input. Users can use the context menu in the text editor to utilize ChatGPT to complete operations such as text style transformation, summary generation, list or table creation, and even directly ask ChatGPT to generate new content or insert images for the current document.

It is worth mentioning that accessing and using ChatGPT in these ways will be completely free and will not require any account registration. Paid users who have already registered for an OpenAI account can connect their accounts to obtain an advanced experience with ChatGPT. Apple has hinted that it may support the integration of other artificial intelligence models in the future, and the cooperation with ChatGPT is not exclusive.

Privacy protection becomes a key challenge.Unlike most large language models that rely on cloud servers for training and deployment, Apple emphasized the privacy protection measures of "Apple Intelligence" at WWDC.

Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple, said: "You shouldn't send all the details of your life to an organization's artificial intelligence cloud for storage and analysis."

To achieve "new standards for AI privacy protection," Apple first utilized on-device processing. iPhones, iPads, and Macs equipped with the A17 and newer chips can run "most" generative AI models entirely on the device, without privacy risks.

When more powerful cloud models are needed, Apple uses its own servers based on Apple Silicon chips and has developed a "Private Cloud Compute" system. It only sends the minimum amount of data required for the task to the server for processing, and the data is not stored or used for model training after processing is completed.

What's more noteworthy is that Apple has promised to make the code running on these servers public, allowing independent experts to review it to ensure that its privacy commitments are fulfilled. At the same time, iOS devices will also have built-in encryption verification mechanisms, and only software that has been publicly registered can run on the server and interact with the device.However, despite Apple's promises in the area of privacy protection, whether it can truly fulfill its commitments in the execution of details still remains to be tested by time. After all, artificial intelligence training cannot be separated from a large amount of data. How to provide an experience equivalent to public cloud while achieving localization and privacy protection will be a great challenge.

Apple's entire family bucket system upgrade

This WWDC not only focuses on artificial intelligence innovation, but also Apple's multiple operating systems have also ushered in significant updates.

iOS 18 has added personalized features to the home screen, including more flexible icon layouts and new themes, and you can also set unified colors for applications.The control center has also added personalized features, supporting third-party app integration, and the camera and flashlight on the lock screen can be replaced with other control center icons. At the same time, users can choose to lock or hide apps that they do not want others to use or see.

In addition, the new version of iOS also supports new features such as satellite message sending, game mode, and optimized mail and photo apps.

The iPad has welcomed iPadOS 18, which includes new features such as floating tab bars (sidebars), SharePlay remote sharing, and Smart Script improved handwriting recognition. It also brings the long-awaited native calculator and math notebook apps, which are more naturally adapted to the Apple Pencil, such as supporting handwritten formula recognition and real-time calculation.

For Mac computers, the new version of macOS is named Sequoia. Its new features include automatic window tiling and iPhone mirroring, which allows users to mirror the iPhone screen to the Mac, operate the phone through the Mac keyboard and touchpad, and even switch apps and reply to messages. The transition between Apple devices will be more seamless.

Apple also announced a new Passwords app, which can replace many independent password managers, saving users' passwords on devices and systems such as iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Windows.Additionally, Apple's head-mounted device, Vision Pro, has welcomed a new system, VisionOS 2, which supports more new gestures, a higher resolution virtual display mode, and has added new machine learning-driven features such as 2D to 3D spatial image conversion. The device is also about to be launched in China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

watchOS 11 has introduced new features such as Smart Training Mode and the Vitals app, which provides important health indicators.

In general, Apple is fully embracing the era of artificial intelligence. With the advantages of privacy protection and hardware, Apple has high hopes for the "Apple Intelligence" service, hoping it will become a new benchmark for artificial intelligence applications in the industry.

The cooperation with OpenAI will also inject powerful artificial intelligence capabilities into the Apple ecosystem. We look forward to seeing whether Apple can maintain its leading position in the mobile field in this transformative field.