Monday marked the start of WWDC 2024, the annual event where Apple announces some of the biggest features for its devices, apps and software. And this year’s WWDC is hell. Thanks to Apple’s new — and heavy — investment in genetic AI technology, the company had a lot to show on the AI front, from an upgraded Siri to AI-generated emoji.
Apple has announced an agreement with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot experience, to a range of its devices. It introduced new photo editing tools to remove objects and people from photos. And it launched an AI feature to proofread, rewrite and summarize text in all content, including notes in emails.
Here’s a rundown of some of Apple’s most notable AI announcements from WWDC 2024.
New Siri
Siri got a makeover thanks to Apple’s groundbreaking artificial intelligence this year, called Apple Intelligence.
Thanks to Apple Intelligence, Siri, which has a revamped look including a new icon and a glowing indicator light around the edges of a device’s screen, can now handle stuttering in speech and better understand context. Now you can also type to Siri and have it answer questions, including questions about how to use your iPhone, iPad or Mac.
Soon, Siri will become even more capable with on-screen awareness and the ability to take action within and between apps — so you can ask Siri to, for example, “make this photo pop” and then “add this photo’ to another app. During Monday’s WWDC keynote, Apple gave the example of Siri finding a photo of your license, extracting your ID number and entering it into a web form for you.
To take advantage of the new Siri, you’ll need an Apple device that supports Apple Intelligence — specifically the iPhone 15 Pro and devices with M1 or newer chips.
ChatGPT integration
Apple is bringing ChatGPT to Siri and other first-party apps and features across all of its operating systems.
Siri users will soon be able to direct questions to ChatGPT for “expertise,” where it might be useful, Apple says. You can include photos with the questions you ask in ChatGPT through Siri or ask questions about your documents or PDFs.
ChatGPT Apple has also integrated ChatGPT into tools across the operating system, such as Writing Tools (powered by Apple Intelligence), which lets you create content with ChatGPT — including images — or request an original idea and send it to ChatGPT to get a revision or variation.
ChatGPT integrations will arrive in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia later this year, Apple says, and will be free without the need to create a ChatGPT or OpenAI account. Initially, they will be powered by GPT-4o, OpenAI’s recently introduced flagship.
Genmoji and Image Playground
Coming soon to iOS 18 on devices that support Apple Intelligence, Genmoji lets you create AI emoji images of anyone in your photo library — or just custom emoji. Genmoji can be used as a sticker to react to messages with a Tapback or embedded in your messages, Apple says.
A separate new picture creation feature allows iPhone users to create AI pictures of the people they text with. Apple Intelligence will understand who you’re chatting with, Apple says — so if you want to personalize the conversation with a custom AI image, you can do so right away.
There’s also Image Playground, a new image creation feature that works in apps like Notes, Freeform, Keynote, and Pages.
Available as a standalone application and API for developers, Image Playground allows users to create images using concepts such as themes, costumes, accessories, parts and more. You select the topics you want to include and, a few minutes later, Image Playground creates a preview of your image.
AI photo editing
Apple’s new Clean Up tool, built into the upgraded Photos app, removes unwanted people and objects from photos.
Clean Up can be used on any image in Photos by circling or highlighting the thing — or person — to be removed. Relying on artificial intelligence, Clean Up removes the selected item and replaces it with contextually aware pixels to try to make it look like the thing (or person) was never there in the first place.
On the subject of photos, it is now better organized thanks to artificial intelligence. In iOS 18, Photos will display collections of photos that are automatically organized by topics such as time, people, favorite memories, trips, and more. And you’ll be able to use more specific terms to search the photos.
Recorded calls
Coming soon to iPhone 15 Pro and later, iOS will optionally record and transcribe your phone calls.
The feature — which must be turned on manually and which notifies the other end of the line that the call is being recorded so as not to violate privacy laws — transcribes what is said during the call and then provides a summary of the key points discussed in the iOS Notes app.
Apple noted (no pun intended) during Monday’s keynote that you’ll also be able to record and transcribe audio from within the Notes app.
