Apple will finally tell its AI story at the 2024 WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), but that doesn't necessarily mean it will showcase any groundbreaking features like Google, Microsoft, or OpenAI. Instead, this event may see Apple introduce some basic AI functionalities, such as transcribing voice memos or generating emojis, as well as announce its rumored collaboration with OpenAI.
Recent rumors suggest that Apple will allow chatbots to integrate more deeply into its operating system, and OpenAI seems to have gained an advantage with ChatGPT. However, Apple is still in negotiations with Google to incorporate Gemini, according to Gurman's report. At the same time, Apple is also rumored to be in talks with Anthropic. Besides these potential collaborations, Apple's AI strategy will evidently focus on practicality.
According to reports, one significant and noteworthy improvement that Apple will announce is the "Smart Summary" feature mentioned by Gurman. This feature will automatically summarize missed texts, notifications, and other content, such as "web pages, news articles, documents, notes, and other forms of media." This could be particularly useful for managing iOS notifications, which can be numerous and difficult to handle. If you pay close attention, this vaguely echoes Microsoft's recent announcement of the Recall feature, which allows you to review your actions on the computer.
Gurman writes that the Voice Memo app may also receive significant enhancements in AI-generated transcriptions. From a personal perspective, this would be crucial for referencing interview recordings and could be very useful for students recording lectures for future reference, among other scenarios. Apple devices already have similar functionalities, such as automatically generated voice mail transcriptions and system-wide video, audio, and conversation captions.
The company also plans to announce AI-driven improvements to Spotlight search on devices, internet searches conducted using Safari, and writing suggestions for emails and texts. Additionally, the company may use AI to enhance photos and generate emojis in real-time based on your text content.
Apple may showcase a better and more natural Siri voice built on its own large-scale language model, as well as improved Siri functionality on the Apple Watch. According to Gurman's report, Apple devices will perform all these tasks locally whenever possible, but for complex tasks, they will offload processing to servers based on Apple's own M2 Ultra. Overall, he states that "devices released in the past year or so" will receive most of the new on-device AI capabilities.
In addition to AI features, the company may also announce a new feature for iOS 18 that allows users to change the app icons to different colors. While similar functionality can currently be achieved using the iOS Shortcuts app, a more direct method would certainly be welcomed. Furthermore, the rumored upcoming changes to the iPhone home screen will eventually allow users to place app icons wherever they want, rather than the forced top-to-bottom, left-to-right arrangement imposed by iOS.
