At its annual developer conference (WWDC) on Monday, June 10, Apple announced ambitious software features powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Some of them will be added to Apple brand devices by the end of the year, others during 2025. The company is doing much better than catching up with the competition in terms of artificial intelligence: the new features, grouped under the term “Apple Intelligence”, constitute one of the most overt developments known iOS, iPadOS and MacOS software. But it will be for the iPhone 15 Pro as well as computers and tablets powered by at least M1 chips, which is only a small portion of the devices in circulation today.
Siri is more resourceful
If Siri's advancements live up to Apple's announcements, it will indeed be a huge success “Giant step” To his assistant, to use the words used during his presentation. There is no need, at first, to be careful about using the correct wording when speaking to Apple's personal assistant: Siri should understand our requests better. It should now also be able to perform complex searches inside your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook, like “Show me pictures of Stacy in New York in a pink coat.” The new Siri will also be able to control apps on the iPhone “With hundreds of different commands” : We can ask, for example, to revive the colors of the image we just found.
With a single spoken command, Apple promises that Siri will summarize notes taken during a meeting before sending them to a group of contacts via email. Or we will search for our driver's license number in the photo gallery to insert it into the form. Must be able to juggle between apps: According to Apple, to answer something as complex as “Can I postpone this appointment by an hour without risking missing my daughter's dance performance?” », Siri will be able to find the show time in our emails, then review our calendar, and detect traffic conditions on the road, before providing a thoughtful response. Finally, for online information searches, Siri Chat will use GPT-4o, OpenAI's conversational agent, at no additional cost.
It remains to be seen whether this personal assistant with renewed ambitions will be able to carry out the vast majority of the tasks assigned to him, or whether he will frequently fail our trust in him. In spirit, the new Siri seems anyway more ambitious than the new assistant that Google sketched out a few weeks ago during its developer conference.
The new Siri, at least as intended by Apple, aims to be more than just a voice assistant, but one capable of helping us in all circumstances. In fact, this new version will not only be controlled by voice: it will also be possible to give it written instructions.
Writing tools
When writing a note, email or text message, it will be possible for the respective devices to bring up a writing assistant to rewrite the message in a different tone (friendly, professional, concise) or ask ChatGPT to write a draft message from scratch, based on a short instruction.
The new features announced by Apple will also enable you to summarize incoming emails and respond to them intelligently. To better prepare the answer, questions will be sent to the user, in the form of a quick MCQ, which will serve as the basis for writing the message. One of the most surprising features: those that offer only display of the program's emails and notifications that are considered priority by the program, and even “Reduce interruptions” By allowing only important alerts to pass through. However, are we willing to risk entrusting AI with the power to incorrectly block an alert that may be important? Only in-depth testing will allow us to test its reliability.
Tools for creating images
Many AI-powered tools are supposed to allow, on the devices in question, the creation of completely new images based on simple text instructions and the inclusion of the face of a loved one – or one's own. These visuals may resemble a drawing, photo, or animation. Apple will also offer the ability to create fully custom emojis, to illustrate a message that doesn't require a naturally existing emoji. In addition, it will be possible, from existing videos, to create a short film by writing simple instructions: The program will be responsible for editing the video clips. With a talent that is currently difficult to define.
Please note: We will now be able to record voice calls on iPhone and get automatic transcription.
Privacy framework
To carry out these tasks, the device often uses its own artificial intelligence programs, which work directly within its chips, to preserve the privacy of its users. Apple did not specify how these calculations affect battery life.
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However, for some orders, the device will have to connect to Apple's data center via an Internet connection. Apple promises that only the most important personal information will be sent to these remote computers. In theory, they should only be used to process the request, before being deleted immediately. Obviously: they are not intended to be used to train Apple and OpenAI models.
Improvements for iOS and MacOS
In addition to AI-related announcements, Apple has announced dozens of software developments for its devices. Two among others: the software that is equipped with iPhones will now be able to lock the application, so that it will only be unlocked when you present your face to the FaceID system or enter the mobile password. Finally, on Mac, we will soon be able to display the iPhone screen on a computer screen, and handle all its applications using the mouse. For example, drag and drop files from your computer to your smartphone.
