In what could only be described as a calculated exercise in corporate showmanship, Apple held its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this week, unleashing a torrent of software announcements with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for slightly overcooked pasta. At the heart of the spectacle was Apple Intelligence, an inoffensively branded suite of artificial intelligence tools designed to help users write emails, summarize notifications, and hopefully forget that Siri has been basically asleep for the last decade.
Apple CEO Tim Cook took to the stage with his trademark charisma calibrated to “smooth beige” and introduced the firm’s grand vision for integrating AI throughout iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. In a move that surprised roughly no one, Apple has partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into its devices, which the company insists will only access your data if you explicitly ask for it, surrounded by more security measures than a Bond villain’s lair. Privacy, they say, remains “fundamental” to Apple’s approach, though if you shout that word too loudly around developers, you may get asked to leave.
Of course, Siri is getting a conscience reboot, apparently moving from “perpetually confused aunt” to “mildly competent intern”. This includes a new design, richer language understanding, and the ability to function within apps, rather than merely hovering near them awkwardly. Siri, we are told, will now understand context and maintain conversations, so you’ll finally be able to ask it where your saved boarding pass went without being redirected to the contact information for a dolphin sanctuary in Nova Scotia.
Elsewhere, Apple users can look forward to the joys of Smart Reply in Mail and the dubious glory of Genmoji, where freshly generated emojis can now reflect your deepest feelings, at least as interpreted by a neural net trained on text from 2019. Also included are features like Image Playground, which lets users create images on-device using generative AI, assuming of course that they don’t mind slightly haunted renderings of their dog as an astronaut.
Apple stressed that much of the AI processing will happen on-device, with more intensive tasks sent to what they’re calling a “Private Cloud Compute”. It is a term that sounds comforting, like a soft blanket made entirely of monitoring software, though Apple argues it cannot see your data and wouldn’t be particularly interested even if it could. Given how often iCloud asks you to log in despite logging in just three seconds ago, one might generously say the jury is still out.
In a maneuver that felt distinctly un-Apple, the company also declared it would allow users to choose from multiple third-party AI models in the future. Which is to say, OpenAI gets the seat at the table for now but Google, Anthropic, and others are circling the hors d’oeuvres like techno sharks at a poorly attended mixer.
Fans will also notice a raft of iOS 18 updates, such as a new Control Center, more customizable home screen icons, and the ability to lock apps that might reveal your embarrassing obsession with early-2000s ska music. These, Tim Cook assured us, are all about “personal intelligence”, though one suspects the phrase was not meant to be interrogated too closely.
Somehow, Apple made AI sound polite, regretful, and incredibly expensive.