On 10 June 2024, at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced a slew of enhancements in AI capabilities that will be baked into all sorts of Apple devices and services and fundamentally change user experiences and developer opportunities. Highlights include the introduction of Apple Intelligence and the features infused into iOS 18.
The promise of Apple Intelligence is to intuitively alter the way users interact with their devices by learning how to anticipate the context in which its users are acting, and what the user might want to do in response. For example, your iPhone may preemptively open your favorite music streaming app when you plug in your headphones, or choose the best route to your next meeting based on real-time traffic. Such experiences aim for a quantum improvement in user experience by increasing the speed and ease of accomplishing tasks. The infusion of AI into Apple devices will also result in greatly improved levels of accessibility across a range of different features. For example, aspect-based learning models could enhance the capabilities of voice-recognition and predictive text typing by accessing training data to classify and better anticipate typing errors, making these functions exponentially more accessible. People with disabilities will have devices learning the most suitable settings for their needs, as learning models start to access history on user behavior. This will represent the biggest shift towards inclusive technology to date.
What does iOS 18 mean for app developers? Well, instead of having to develop every app from the ground up, iOS 18 offers developers a whole new paradigm of creating applications, thanks to how deeply integrated AI is into the system. Developers can now design apps in ways they wouldn’t have even imagined before, and with higher levels of sophistication that are possible with richer machine learning models and robust APIs. With so many cognitive tasks handled by AI, it allows developers to break new ground in app design. AI unlocks a whole new frontier of app development for developers. At its heart, AI revolutionizes the way software developers solve problems. Even basic automation of common coding tasks, such as the automated code review or optimisation guides introduced in Xcode, helps bring an app to market much faster, capitalizing on the power of AI. The more apps can be automated with AI, the more creativity developers have when crafting a truly engaging experience for the end user.
With Apple’s AI working smartly in the background, AI-driven improvements will give anyone the tools to be a pro, managing photo and video editing with ease in iOS 18. With features like auto-enhance, intelligent cropping, and AI-powered filters, users now can remove significant technical barriers, adding cinematic flourishes and polished editing that free keen amateur photographers from hours of polishing images. Professional photographers and film editors will also benefit from AI-driven editing in the long term, by allowing them to trim down extensive footage to bite-size auto generated keytime clips, with seamless machinist transitions between them. These intelligent tools will cut-down on time, trim out filler, and offer new creative opportunities in their stead.
Health and wellness have always been central to the core mission of Apple’s product ecosystem, and with the new tools of AI, it’s going to get better on one quantitative level. Thanks to its ability to read massive datasets, Apple Watch (now running on updated iOS 18) will be able to predict disease before you even feel it. The new Apple device can provide proactive health monitoring in scenarios such as preventing heart attacks by warning you of abnormal heart rates. On another quantitative level – mental health – monitors embedded in the device can look out for indicators of stress and anxiety, and offer mindfulness exercises or give real-time advice. Apple products now serve as personal life coaches. It’s a holistic approach to health, joining physical and mental wellbeing. Health will be our future in consumer tech.
And with Apple claiming a leap in natural language processing, Siri, its virtual assistant, is greatly improved. Apple Intelligence lets you ask Siri things like: ‘What did I do today?’ and receive not just your schedule, but connections with the summaries of the apps that interacted with it as suggested actions, motivational quotes curated for you, and so forth. Thanks to this improved virtual assistant, third-party app integrations can be programmed extensively, so that Siri can tell you more about what’s happening in the apps she loves, rather than just about the apps you allow her to talk to.
There’s a race underway in top artificial intelligence (AI) tech, with familiar names such as Google, Amazon or Microsoft investing all they can in the mind-building aspect of AI, striving to see who comes out on top. But the Cupertino company appears so far to differ from the Californian triumvirate in not only making AI a priority, but pulling off the feat of designing its own computers from the ground up. Google has a great AI for search and data analytics, whereas Amazon has a wonderfully successful one for smart home integration. But Apple stands out for its unwavering commitment to its model of hardware and software integration and a beautiful user experience. Then there’s the privacy factor: I’ve already noted that Apple staked their claim, at least ethnically, on AI operations with a ‘preemptive bias toward privacy through limiting data footprints’. Taken together, the bold, distinctive direction of Apple’s technological vision, combined with their fiercely guarded ethics, makes for a winner. In any other domain of technology, anyone else in the field would fall under the immense shadow cast by Apple and think long and hard before daring to launch a new product.
Picture the announcement at WWDC 2024. Apple has made big advances in the concept of ‘Apple Intelligence’ – integrating AI throughout its products and services to enhance natural language and user interactions, app development and design, photo and video creation, health and preference data, management and care, plus improvements in the use of virtual assistants of the future. In a world of more advanced and increasingly ‘people-like’ AI assistants, the companies that have the best ability to integrate seamlessly and with a strong commitment to privacy will likely be the winners of the new AI innovation race.
