Apple partners with OpenAI to release Apple Intelligence

While Apple (AAPL) has been quiet on the AI front compared to other tech giants over the past year, yesterday they announced their first major upgrades coming to iOS with what they're referring to as Apple Intelligence.

Specifically, the company announced a partnership with OpenAI to integrate their LLMs directly into Apple's own generative AI features, which Cook referred to as a "new personal intelligence system". As Cook stated:

Apple Intelligence will transform what users can do with our products — and what our products can do for our users.

This personal intelligence will be embedded into the iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices, providing personal context to the AI models, which has understandably led to privacy concerns.

For example, Elon Musk said this is an "unacceptable security concern" and that Apple devices would be banned at his companies if they integrate OpenAI at the OS level.

Apple Intelligence Writing Tools

Putting the privacy concerns aside for now, Apple Intelligence is also bringing a suite of systemwide Writing Tools that allow users to rewrite, proofread, and summarize text across various applications, including Mail, Notes, Pages, and third-party app

In addition to text, Apple Intelligence announced a new image creation features with Image Playground. This new feature allows users to generate images in seconds, choosing from styles like Animation, Illustration, or Sketch, and will be integrated into apps such as Messages and Notes, allowing users to create visually engaging content effortlessly.

For example, the new Genmoji feature also lets users create personalized emoji based on descriptions or photos, which surely the younger generations will be fans of...

Photo and video capabilities

The Photos app is also getting several enhancements with Apple Intelligence, including:

• Users can perform natural language searches to find specific photos or moments in videos, and the new Clean Up tool can remove distracting objects from the background of images without altering the main subject.
• The Memories feature allows users to create personalized storylines from their photos and videos, complete with suggested music tracks from Apple Music, ensuring a private and enriching experience.

Siri gets smarter

Apple’s virtual assistant Siri is also getting a much-needed upgrade, and will soon allow you to perform actions across both Apple and third-party apps. These agentic features will be available both via text and voice.

Apple's new privacy standards

Finally, Apple introduced their new Privacy Cloud Compute and privacy standards, as they state:

A cornerstone of Apple Intelligence is on-device processing, and many of the models that power it run entirely on device. To run more complex requests that require more processing power, Private Cloud Compute extends the privacy and security of Apple devices into the cloud to unlock even more intelligence.

Independent experts can also inspect the code running on Apple silicon servers to verify privacy, and Private Cloud Compute cryptographically ensures that devices only communicate with verified servers.

Apple Intelligence is coming this fall

While not yet available, Apple Intelligence will be available for free to users and will be included in the beta versions of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia this fall, initially supporting U.S. English.

The full public release is expected later this year, with additional features and language support rolling out over the next year. The system will be compatible with iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPad and Mac devices with M1 and later.

You can learn more about Apple Intelligence in their press release below:

Introducing Apple Intelligence for iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Apple today introduced Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Apple Newsroom