• by Danielle Oster , June 10, 2024

As anticipated, Apple unveiled its new generative AI capabilities at its annual World Wide Developers Conference event at its Cupertino, California headquarters, introducing audiences to its generative-AI powered Apple Intelligence system, which the company is launching across devices.

Addressing the audience, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that generative AI offers “opportunities to take the capabilities of Apple to new heights,” adding that the company wanted to carefully implement the new technology to “make sure the outcome reflects the principles at the core of our products,” and understand users by being “grounded in your personal contexts.”

He characterized the innovation as a ““new personal intelligence system that makes your most personal products more useful and delightful.”

What does that look like in practice?

By integrating the function within key features, paired with personal context, Apple Intelligence provides a systemwide Writing Tools function that can help rewrite, proofread, and summarize across different text-based apps, including Apple’s Mail, Notes and Pages apps, as well as third-party apps. Image Playground lets users create personalized generative-AI images in  Animation, Illustration, or Sketch formats to use within Messages and its own designated app.

As part of the “largest-ever redesign” of its Photos app, Apple Intelligence also brings new tools to image editing and curation through Memories in Photos. The function “lets users create the stories they want to see just by typing a description,” to create a “storyline” with chapters based on identified themes, and “arrange them into a movie with its own narrative arc,” according to a release.

Apple Intelligence also promises an upgrade to Apple’s Siri assistant app, which the company claims will make it “even more natural, contextually relevant, and personal,” as well as introducing the ability to type to Siri and switch seamlessly between talk and text commands.

A key part of Apple's pitch is its promise that its AI system is grounded in protecting user privacy. In cases when external servers are used,, “data is not stored or made accessible to Apple and is only used to fulfill the user’s requests,” according to the company, which also promises that third-party “independent experts” can verify said privacy.

According to Apple’s presentation, users will be prompted and asked for consent before any information is shared using tools integrating ChatGPT. Apple also said it would add additional support for other AI models to be integrated into writing tools and other functions in the future.

In closing the presentation, Cook described Apple’s new generative AI tools as “AI for the rest of us,” a phrase also used as a tagline at the end of a subsequently released “Apple Intelligence In 5 Minutes” explainer video on the brand's YouTube channel.

Cook called the developments an “exciting new chapter of personal intelligence,” adding, “We’re just getting started.”