Google and Microsoft have made their developer conferences a showcase for generative AI technologies, and now all eyes are on next week's Worldwide Developers Conference, which is expected to mark the debut of Apple Intelligence.
The Cupertino-based company is facing a lot of pressure. Apple has lagged behind its competitors in the AI race and probably needs to pull out all the stops to impress its fans and shareholders. But this shouldn't mean you're overly excited about the features.
Reliability first
Apple makes some of the most popular devices on the planet, and its AI capabilities should play a role in making those devices more useful. Many AI-based functions rely on going back to the cloud to get answers or input. But if Apple can run some useful features locally on the device, users may be able to ditch cloud-based tools in favor of always-available AI. Offline recordings from voice notes and notes apps may fit the bill.
Apple will likely release a rundown of notifications and web pages, basic text creation, and photo editing. But many browsers, note-taking apps, and photo-editing apps already have this feature. Apple needs to make the implementation as smooth and seamless as possible to stand out.
Privacy first
Apple is likely to reinforce its privacy-first approach, so it may not give Siri or its AI-based features free reign over all apps. According to a Bloomberg report, only the iPhone 15 Pro and iPad or Mac with an M1 or higher chip will have the AI feature and you can select it. If this is true, Apple is still cautious and doesn't want to get caught up in a user backlash, despite being behind the AI feature adoption curve.
The company recently came under fire for its iPad 'Crush' ad, which showed the creative tool being destroyed by a hydraulic press. This shows that Apple is underestimating the effort required to create a work of art by packaging the creator, the tools, and the work of art into a slim capitalist package. With AI already getting a bad rap among creators, Apple may not want to irritate them again. Therefore, an uncontroversial approach is likely to be taken.
Siri improvements
The biggest change expected is that Apple will We're improving Siri to better understand and communicate your queries. More accurate results. Currently, Siri cannot multitask. If you ask your Assistant to set a 10-minute timer and a 5-minute timer, it will set a 15-minute timer instead. We may not need the help of generative AI to solve these problems, but Siri's overhaul should at least help.
If Siri can't access deeper into an app as expected, Apple could make life easier for users by introducing an AI assistant to help users create complex Siri shortcuts to perform multi-step tasks.
Rumors are swirling that Apple will announce a deal with OpenAI to boost AI capabilities across its operating system. It's not yet known how much of Apple Intelligence will be built out of the deal. Given the hallucination issues with AI, Apple may not want to get directly involved in content-related AI features just yet.
Many companies make big promises about AI-based capabilities, only to be disappointed by inaccurate or biased results. Companies like Google and OpenAI have had to withdraw AI features due to errors or copyright issues. Therefore, companies may not want to rely on Large-Scale Language Models (LLMs) for content generation.
