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Apple will begin integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into its operating systems starting with the beta release of Apple Intelligence across all of its desktops, laptops and mobile devices this fall, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Monday at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in Cupertino, Calif.

The new technology will be “deeply integrated” into iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, creating a more conversational version of its chatbot Siri, AI-general personal avatars Apple is calling “Genmoji,” and the ability for Siri to use OpenAI’s chatbot to expand its capabilities. 

“We’re thrilled to introduce a new chapter in Apple innovation. Apple Intelligence will transform what users can do with our products — and what our products can do for our users,” said Cook in a statement. “Our unique approach combines generative AI with a user’s personal context to deliver truly helpful intelligence. And it can access that information in a completely private and secure way to help users do the things that matter most to them. This is AI as only Apple can deliver it, and we can’t wait for users to experience what it can do.”

Apple is playing catch-up with competitors Google, which recently rolled out its upgraded AI platform Gemini, and Microsoft. Users of either Google or Microsoft products will recognize many of these features in their existing apps, such as Gmail and Google Docs and Microsoft Outlook. Investors have been looking for Apple to more aggressively enter the AI era. After Monday’s announcements, they did not seem entirely convinced, with Apple shares down 2% in afternoon trading. 

‍Conversational AI

Apple Intelligence, which will also be integrated throughout the company’s family of apps, will be incorporated into system-wide writing tools across all Apple platforms, helping users to write, rewrite, proofread and summarize text in such applications as Mail, Notes, Pages and third-party apps.

Mail will add a new focus on prioritizing a user’s most important and time-sensitive emails using priority messages, while a new smart reply feature will flag questions in an email to make sure the reader has a chance to answer them, as well as provide suggestions for quick responses. In both the Notes and Phone apps, users will be able to record, transcribe and summarize audio. When a recording is initiated on a call, all participants will be notified, and a summary will be generated at the end. 

Apple also is incorporating ChatGPT across its platforms to assist with content creation. 

AI for Image Creation

Apple is adding a new AI-driven app, Image Playground, to its platform that will allow users to create images in three styles: animation, illustration or sketch. It will also be built into some Apple apps, including Messages, Notes, Keynote, Freeform and Pages. Third-party app builders can incorporate Image Playground into their products using the new Image Playground API. 

In Photos, Apple Intelligence will help users search for and find photos and to search for specific moments in videos. There’s also a new Clean Up tool that will allow users to remove objects fro their photos.  In Music, users can get song suggestions to accompany their videos.

Amping Up Siri

Using AI, Siri is gaining richer language-understanding capabilities, allowing it to be more productive on behalf of the user across apps. For example, Siri can send someone photos from an event just by being asked or sift through texts to locate a recommendation from a friend or the time a flight will arrive.

As it incorporates all of this, Apple maintains its focus on privacy. While as much of Apple Intelligence’s processing as possible will happen on the devices that are using it, some requests will be too big. When that happens, Apple Intelligence will access Private Cloud Compute, which “extends the privacy and security of Apple devices into the cloud,” according to Apple. 

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