Back in June, we finally knew what Apple’s AI offering would be. Its platform, called “Apple Intelligence,” made a different bet than its rivals: Apple will proceed more slowly and cautiously here, and now we will finally know how far these AI options can go.

And we will know because Apple Intelligence will be available on both iOS and macOS in October. As we noted in our review last June, the functions are by no means revolutionary. Apple is updating itself in various sections, but its proposal does not currently want to leave ChatGPT or Midjourney behind. The plan is different.

Privacy as a flag

Apple Intelligence’s approach to iPhones and Macs is hybrid: we’ll have fully custom local AI —Everything is processed on mobile or computer, no data is transmitted to the cloud– and a more powerful one that will leverage the cloud platform if we need it.

For this reason, Apple proposes the use of a type of artificial intelligence that will not even require an internet connection most of the time. We can ask things like the following from an iPhone or a Mac:

• writing tools: For example, if we are writing an email, we can change the “tone” of the text to be more friendly, professional or concise. We also have an intelligent “advanced text editor” that evaluates the grammar, word choice and even the structure of our sentences to improve them. And of course, we can also select a text so that the AI ​​can create a short summary in the form of a list of the most important points.
• Genmoji: Apple’s Image Playground technology will allow the creation of images, but these are far from the hyperrealism sought by competitors such as Midjourney or DALL-E. Instead, the focus is on the creation of emojis (Genmoji), for example, or more cartoonish or cartoon-like images. Here too, Apple wants to try to avoid controversial uses and the potential use of the tool to create deepfakes.
• Siri: Apple’s voice assistant also gains thanks to Apple Intelligence. The outline of the screen will have a special light effect when we use it and we will be able to speak in a much more natural and less forced way. Siri also remembers personal context: it always indexes the data on our mobile phone (such as calendar or messages) locally and specifically and uses this to answer our questions quickly and clearly. For example, what day and what time our mother’s plane arrived. We can use this with our voice, but now we can also use it with the keyboard.
• AI photo search: The AI ​​also recognizes, tags and indexes our photo library locally, and “understands” the context of photos so we can search for them with a general description (“my son is skiing”) and create movies with a specific theme (“holidays in Asturias 2024”).
• ChatGPT comes to the rescue: These local functions are complemented by the use of chatbots such as ChatGPT – there will be others in the future – if we need them. Therefore, in certain scenarios we can choose the option of using ChatGPT, but in these cases there will be a connection to the cloud and certain data will be shared, as already happens when we use the service on its website.

This is just the beginning

Apple’s head of software, Craig Federighi, said in June that these features were just the beginning of something very important for Apple.

Competition updates have been made in some parts of the company, but for now he did it with hesitationIt’s clear that the focus is on privacy (AI runs locally on the device whenever possible) and is limited but practical in scope.

The new options will be available in English next month, with special versions coming in December for Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, South African, and UK English. They also say Apple Intelligence will be available in Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish next year.

It has not been disclosed at this time whether these Apple Intelligence functions are available. They will reach everyone the same waybut it is assumed that there will be certain limitations, at least in the European Union, due to the Digital Markets Act. It is possible that ways can still be found to “bypass” these barriers to be able to test these functions in countries like Spain.

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