After months of silence on its AI ambitions, Apple entered the artificial intelligence race with a lavish product announcement on Monday. 

At its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), the multi-trillion dollar tech giant heralded a new era of technology, dubbed ‘Apple Intelligence’.

Apple Intelligence is essentially a snazzy brand name for Apple’s new-found focus on AI, triggered by the huge success of the ChatGPT chatbot 18 months ago. 

It means there will be an extensive presence of AI across Apple’s devices and apps –  whether you like it or not. 

While Apple claims the technology will usher in a ‘new chapter in Apple innovation’, it seems that not everyone agrees, with Elon Musk dramatically warning that he will ban Apple devices from his firms following the news.

‘Apple Intelligence’ refers to a slew of new AI-powered features coming on Apple’s upcoming software update, iOS 18, from AI-generated emoji to a new version of Siri that uses ChatGPT, OpenAI’s notorious chatbot 

A new, extensive presence of AI across Apple’s software – given the brand name ‘Apple Intelligence’ – includes AI-summarized documents in Mail and Notes and an image-generating AI dubbed ‘Image Playground’, plus ChatGPT’s integration with Siri

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At the unveiling event, CEO Tim Cook said Apple Intelligence marks ‘a new chapter in Apple innovation’ and will ‘transform what users can do with our products’. 

‘Our unique approach combines generative AI with a user’s personal context to deliver truly helpful intelligence,’ Cook said. 

The tech giant announced Apple Intelligence with great reverence as ‘the personal intelligence system that combines the power of generative models with personal context to deliver intelligence’. 

To put it much more simply, it’s an umbrella term for all the jobs AI will be able to do on your iPhone, iPad and Mac computer – as long as it has the upcoming iOS 18 software and an all-important AI chip inside the device. 

ChatGPT-Siri integration  

Surely the biggest part of Apple Intelligence is the integration of OpenAI’s hugely popular chatbot ChatGPT with Siri, Apple’s in-built virtual assistant. 

Before WWDC, it was rumoured that Apple would be creating its own AI chatbot to rival ChatGPT, but instead it’s partnered with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to Apple devices. 

iOS 18 users will be asked before any questions are sent to ChatGPT, along with any documents or photos, and Siri then presents the answer

With better ‘language-understanding capabilities’ enabled by ChatGPT, Siri will help you across multiple apps and ‘accelerate everyday tasks’, Apple said. 

You’ll be able to press and hold the side button to activate Siri as normal, but with ChatGPT behind it Siri will be able to ‘answer thousands of questions about how to do something’ that it couldn’t before. 

For example, you could say, ‘Play that podcast that Jamie recommended’ and Siri will locate and play the episode, without the user having to remember whether it was mentioned in a text or an email.

Or you could ask, ‘When is mum’s flight landing?’ and Siri will find the flight details and cross-reference them with real-time flight tracking to give an arrival time. 

Apple insists that private user information and their queries will not be logged or stored by Siri, unlike the normal version of ChatGPT.

However, Elon Musk is among those who doesn’t buy this, having tweeted that Apple is ‘selling you down the river’ by handing your data over to OpenAI. 

AI-generated emoji 

If you can never quite find the emoji you’re looking for during chat conversations, Apple has the answer.  

One of the more fun parts of Apple Intelligence is AI-generated emoji, which Apple has called ‘Genmoji’ (a mix of ‘generated’ and ’emoji’). 

In the Messages app, you can type a short description of the emoji you want – such as ‘smiley relaxing wearing cucumbers’ or ‘squirrel DJ’. 

AI-generated emoji: In the Messages app, users can type a short description (e.g. ‘smiley relaxing wearing cucumbers’) to get a unique emoji to send to someone 

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Similar to AI tools that just need a few words to create weird artworks, from that single prompt Genmoji returns an AI-generated approximation of what you had in mind.

If you don’t like what the AI has made for you, there are a few back-up options for you to choose from.  

As emoji’s becoming increasingly popular to convey feelings in place of words, Apple says the tool takes emoji ‘to an entirely new level’. 

Clean Up 

Apple’s Clean Up tool for the Photos app makes ultra-clean edits to photos – without any telltale signs that the snap has been tampered with in any way. 

It lets users remove ‘distracting objects’ from the background of a photo – for example a photobomber in the background of a family snap. 

The new Clean Up tool in Apple’s Photos app can identify and remove ‘distracting objects’ in the background of a photo

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Clean Up is very similar to Google’s photo-editing technology ‘Magic Eraser’ for its Pixel phones, heavily promoted in Google adverts in recent years. 

But the technology has been described by some as ‘Orwellian’ as it can distort reality and ‘create a false memory’. 

Referring to Clean Up, one commenter said it ‘can be misused’ because it ‘makes deleting evidence easy’. 

Image generator 

AI also powers a new image-generating tool called ‘Image Playground’, which is available on multiple apps, including Messages and Pages. 

With Image Playground, users can create images in a few seconds, choosing from three styles – ‘animation’, ‘illustration’ and ‘sketch’. 

Image Playground allows users to create fun images in seconds, choosing from three styles – Animation, Illustration and Sketch

A promo image appears to show a photo of a person being turned into a video game-style 3D avatar wearing a spacesuit in the ‘animation’ setting. 

Rather like Genmoji, this ‘exciting’ image creation tool will help iPhone owners ‘communicate and express themselves in new ways’, the company says. 

Movie Memories 

The vast media storage capabilities of an iPhone means its always tempting to look back through your photos and video for a burst of nostalgia. 

Recognizing this, Apple has come up with ‘Movie Memories’, an AI tool that creates the perfect home movie to watch on your device. 

By typing a short description – for example ‘last summer in our garden’ – the AI can search your media library and and arrange photos and clips into a movie ‘with its own narrative arc’. 

Movie Memories picks out the best photos and videos based on a user’s description and arranges it all into a movie with its own narrative arc

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And as no movie is quite as good without a bit of music, you’ll get song suggestions from Apple Music to match the memory. 

Again, Apple stresses the privacy aspect of using an AI to search through your private life. 

‘As with all Apple Intelligence features, user photos and videos are kept private on device and are not shared with Apple or anyone else,’ it says. 

AI writing tools  

Using AI to make your writing extra concise is not a new thing – for example Microsoft’s Copilot AI is creating first drafts and suggesting edits in Word.

But now Apple is jumping on the bandwagon with its own AI-powered writing tools.

The tech will rewrite, proofread and summarize text on multiple apps, including Mail, Notes and Pages, as well as some third-party apps.

‘Whether tidying up class notes, ensuring a blog post reads just right, or making sure an email is perfectly crafted, Writing Tools help users feel more confident in their writing,’ the firm says.  

Apple says: ‘Apple Intelligence unlocks new ways for users to enhance their writing and communicate more effectively’

iOS 18 – which is due to arrive in September – will be compatible with many old iPhone models, including iPhone 14, iPhone 13 and iPhone 12. 

However, according to Apple’s website, Apple Intelligence needs an up-to-date AI chip in a device to run – the A17 Pro (in iPhones) or the M1 or later (in iPads and Macs). 

Therefore, as it stands, the only two iPhones that will get Apple Intelligence are the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max – but not iPhone 15 standard version. 

However, AI will become even more ubiquitous across Apple devices as new devices are released and older ones without the required AI chips are phased out.

Thomas Husson, principal analyst at Forrester, said AI will power ‘almost invisible experiences without consumers realizing it or even knowing it’.

‘Apple Intelligence constantly leverages on-device information and personal context behind the scenes to automatically improve the user-experience,’ Husson said. 

‘It indeed begs the question, is there an ‘on/off’ button? 

‘I don’t think so and it is another proof point that generative AI will seep into consumers’ lives.’ 

Paolo Pescatore, analyst at PP Foresight, said AI is ‘integrated deeply and broadly across all apps, devices and experiences’. 

‘It will mean that users will be able to accomplish much more in their daily lives – more time-saved, more life hacks, more seamless interactions, more creative ways to communicate, and more fun,’ he said.