It's not AI, it's Apple Intelligence
How Apple has set a new standard for privacy in AI.
Hello there!
It’s not a Friday, but news this big couldn’t wait!🙇🏽♂️
Apple announced a lot of super exciting stuff at yesterday’s WWDC keynote. I’m sure you’ve heard the news:
Apple’s AI is finally here and, of course, it’s called Apple Intelligence.🤖
Apple has overtly referred to it as personal intelligence, emphasising on making AI capable to assist our individualistic, contextual needs.
There are many incredible features that come with this upgrade, the biggest being a partnership with ChatGPT through Siri and her capabilities.
With the latest updates, Siri can now streamline and speed up daily tasks, such as providing turn-by-turn directions, controlling your music, and organising your schedule. Apple AI will allow Siri to be capable of performing hundreds of new actions both within Apple apps and third-party applications.
I won’t go deep into features, you can read them here.
Because what’s more exciting to me what they have been most vocal about:
Privacy🔐
During an on-stage discussion, Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, said:
“For artificial intelligence to be really useful, it has to be centered on you…[To make] that possible, it needs to be integrated into the experience all the time – it needs to be informed by context and knowledge of you. And if it’s going to do that, there’s a lot of responsibility to protect your privacy.”
Craig Apple Intelligence explained that most of the “Apple intelligence” features were developed using Apple's own technology and proprietary foundational models, on-device processing capabilities, an enhanced Siri, and the privacy-centric Private Cloud Compute for server-side processing.
There are also updates to the App Intents framework, enabling third-party apps to integrate with these intelligence features, and an optional integration with OpenAI's ChatGPT-4.
Let’s go one by one.
On-Device Processing Capabilities: Majority of the AI capabilities will be processed on-device i.e. i.e, on your iPhone, Macbook or iPad without sending any data out. It is designed to be aware of your personal information without actually collecting it.
Private Cloud Computing: This is where it gets interesting. For slightly more complex requests or tasks that cannot be done on-device, Apple silicon servers will handle the analysis and provide the answers. Private Cloud Compute ensures cryptographically that iPhones, iPads, and Macs will not communicate with a server unless its software has been publicly logged for inspection.
Enhanced Siri + Opt-in ChatGPT: We’ve talked about a few of Siri’s cpabilities above. Siri additionally can also send user requests to ChatGPT if it finds the query better suited.
THIS is where Apple has ensured that no data will be shared with OpenAI through ChatGPT unless the users agree. They will need to explicitly opt-in before using external AI models, and the ChatGPT partnership is mainly focused on search functions and enhanced writing tools.
All of these are commendable measures to ensure users that their data is private and protected— something Apple has long stood for through its legacy.
It’ll be interesting to see how the partnership with OpenAI rolls out. Elon Musk has already voiced his opinions on the Apple-OpenAI partnership, but we’re yet to see if his concerns hold ground. For now, Apple is steering the conversation where it needs to go.
Apple Intelligence, along with all of the other wonderful features and upgrades, will be available later this year for iPhone, iPad, and Mac users with the release of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. Let’s see how this plays out!
What was your favourite announcement from WWDC?