At Apple’s recently concluded Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), it debuted what it called Apple Intelligence – its take on artificial intelligence.
Now, the company has indicated that it won’t be rushed when it comes to launching its much-anticipated artificial intelligence features on its platform.
It will only become available for developers later this year. Hence, it will not be a part of the first beta releases of iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia.
When the software ultimately launches later this year, it will arrive as a preview and will only work on a subset of Apple’s devices and only in American English.
In some cases, users may even have to join a waitlist to use features, reported Bloomberg.
The initial version of Apple Intelligence will use AI to prioritize notifications and quickly recap your alerts and text messages. The software will also summarize webpages, voice memos, meeting notes and emails. New writing tools, image generation and even custom AI-spawned emoji called Genmoji will be available as a part of it.
But those capabilities aren’t in the first beta version of iOS 18.
Apple typically releases the new version of iOS publicly in September. However, a subset of the Apple Intelligence features won’t launch on it until next year. That includes major enhancements to Apple’s Siri digital assistant.
The upgrades that you are unlikely to see until 2025 include Siri being able to find things on your devices based on context and take action. For example, as Apple demonstrated, a person asks a question about when her mom’s flight is landing, and Siri figures it out based on previous text conversations and emails. Siri also could pull up a podcast sent by a spouse or access a document emailed by a colleague earlier that day — all in response to simple commands.
Other features that are likely to arrive next year include semantic indexing which helps Siri understand the context of your on-device content and personal data.
By next year, Apple Intelligence will also be primed for Siri to precisely control your device and applications. For instance, you could ask Siri to show photos of a certain friend wearing a jacket of a certain colour, and then tell Siri to edit the photo and email it as an attachment. Or Siri can even summarize a meeting and then text that recap to a colleague.
One of the key features expected to come to devices next year is on-screen awareness, which means that Siri will understand what you are doing on your device at any given moment and take action. For example, if you’re texting with a friend about LeBron James, you’ll be able to ask, “How many points did he score last night?” and get an answer.
The version of Siri that launches this year with iOS 18 will still have a number of features and will be able to carry on a more natural conversation than it could previously. Siri also will better understand users even when they misspeak and an enhanced Type to Siri option will be available for entering queries by text rather than speaking them.
Like the major Siri improvements, Apple Intelligence’s support for additional languages and regions also won’t arrive until 2025.
The integration with ChatGPT also may miss the initial release in September, though it should be ready later in 2024.
Observers have noted that the staggered introduction of Apple Intelligence features is believed to have some advantages.
Developers will have more time to support the new capabilities in their apps and also Apple will be able to shift staff around to support the new features.
By starting off with only American English, Apple has more time to train its AI models on other languages.
Apple is also still building its cloud infrastructure — an effort that includes outfitting servers with Mac-grade chips to handle Apple Intelligence features. Apple can’t risk overloading the network with more number of user or requests than it can handle without crashing its network. Apple partner OpenAI, which relies on Microsoft’s servers to host its chatbot, will also be able to manage the number of incoming users when they are gradually introduced in the system in batches.
