Apple Intelligence is the company’s new generative AI offering

Apple on Tuesday unveiled Apple Intelligence, its long-awaited ecosystem-wide advancement into generative AI. As previous rumors suggested, the new feature is called Apple Intelligent (AI, get it?). The company promised that the feature would be built around security, as well as highly personalized experiences.

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

The company has integrated this feature into all of its operating system offerings, including iOS, macOS, and the latest, VisionOS.

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

Senior Vice President Craig Federighi added: “Apple intelligence is built on your personal data and context. » The feature will effectively draw on any personal data users enter into apps like Calendar and Maps.

The system is built on large models of language and intelligence. According to the company, much of this processing is done locally and uses the latest version of Apple silicon. “A lot of these models are completely on-device,” Federighi said at the event.

That said, these consumer systems still have limitations. As such, some of the heavy lifting must be done off-device in the cloud. As such, Apple is adding Private Cloud Compute to the offering. The backend uses services that run Apple chips, with the aim of increasing the privacy of this highly personal data.

Apple Intelligence also includes what is likely the biggest update to Siri since it was announced more than a decade ago. the company says the feature is “more deeply integrated” into its operating systems. In the case of iOS, that means swapping the familiar Siri icon for a glowing blue border that surrounds the desktop while in use.

Siri is no longer just a voice interface. Apple is also adding the ability to enter queries directly into the system to access its AI-based generative intelligence. This is a recognition that voice is often not the best interface for these systems.

App Intents, for its part, brings the possibility of integrating the assistant more directly into different applications. This will start with first-party apps, but the company will also open access to third parties. This addition will significantly improve the kinds of things Siri can do directly.

The offering will also deeply open up multitasking, allowing a sort of cross-app compatibility. This means, for example, that users won’t need to constantly switch between Calendar, Mail and Maps to schedule meetings, for example.

Apple Intelligence will be integrated into most of the company’s applications. This includes things like the ability to help compose messages in Mail (with third-party apps) or simply use Smart Replies to reply. Notably, this is a feature that Google has offered in Gmail for some time now and continues to develop using its own generation AI model, Gemini.

Apple Intelligence will roll out the latest versions of its operating systems, including iOS and iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and visionOS 2.