United States: Apple has unveiled a range of new AI-powered features, supported by a partnership with OpenAI, as it strives to overcome the perception that it is lagging in the technology race.
“Apple Intelligence” was introduced by Apple officials, including CEO Tim Cook, on Monday during a presentation that lasted almost two hours at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, California.
“All of this goes beyond artificial intelligence, it’s personal intelligence, and it is the next big step for Apple,” CEO Tim Cook said.
With the aid of ChatGPT, the virtual assistant Siri will be able to perform hundreds of activities, as part of the updates.
Apple users will now be able to use the company’s in-house technology to build their own emojis based on language cues and to produce summaries of emails in their mailboxes. Apple made a hint that it would set itself apart from competitors Google and Microsoft by placing privacy “at the core” of artificial intelligence (AI), which is renowned for ingesting enormous volumes of data.
Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, stated that “Apple Intelligence” “protects your privacy at every step” and “puts AI models right at the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.”
The iOS 18 operating system, which is expected to be released later this year, will include free updates; however, the complete feature set will only be compatible with more recent iPhone, iPad, and Macbook models.
In a social media post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed his happiness in working with Apple to incorporate ChatGPT into their products, calling the partnership “very happy.”
However, the relationship was criticized by billionaire Elon Musk, the creator of OpenAI rival xAI, who said Apple was “selling you down the river” and could not account for user data once it was shared with OpenAI.
There has been increasing pressure on Apple, which has historically shied away from using the phrase “artificial intelligence,” to demonstrate that it is keeping up with competitors Google and Microsoft in the race to implement AI.
However, it seemed that investors were not impressed by Monday’s revelations, as Apple’s shares dropped by almost 2 percent.
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