After All The Hype, Apple Intelligence Is Finally Live
The fact that Apple has wheeled out CEO Tim Cook to plug its new Apple Intelligence feature for iPhone, iPad and Mac illustrates just how much is riding on the company turning its years of AI R&D into coin.
Apple releases new products and updates regularly, and their press guff typically contains quotes from the head of this department or that. Rarely is Cook mentioned.
But when Apple hit send this morning on its Apple Intelligence launch document, Cook was front and centre.
After giving Samsung – which released its Galaxy AI earlier this year – wide open space without competition for months, Cook knows how crucial the launch is to Apple’s fortunes.
“Apple Intelligence introduces a new era for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, delivering brand-new experiences and tools that will transform what our users can accomplish,” said Cook.
He said Apple Intelligence “builds on years of innovation in AI and machine learning to put Apple’s generative models at the core of our devices”.
The result, he said, was a “personal intelligence system that is easy to use” and that Apple Intelligence “is generative AI in a way that only Apple can deliver”.
The first set of Apple Intelligence features for iPhone, iPad and Mac users is now available through a free software update with the release of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1.
Writing Tools allow users to refine their language by rewriting, proofreading and summarising text in Mail, Messages, Notes, Pages and third-party apps.
With Rewrite, Apple Intelligence “allows users to choose from different versions of what they have written, and adjust the tone — professional, concise, or friendly — to suit the audience and task at hand”.
It can proofread, fix errors in grammar, offer word choices, edits and suggestions to sentence structure. It will explain why it has made edits.
Apple says users can select text and have it summarised “in the form of a digestible paragraph, bulleted key points, a table or a list”.
The Clean Up tool gives users a way to remove elements from an image.
Relations with Siri will change, as it becomes “more natural, flexible and deeply integrated into the system experience”.
Siri has a new design with a glowing light that wraps around the edge of the screen when active on iPhone, iPad or CarPlay.
“On Mac, users can place Siri anywhere on their desktop to access it easily as they work. Users can type to Siri at any time on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and can switch fluidly between text and voice as they use Siri to accelerate everyday tasks,” Apple says.
Create a Memory Movie is available on iPhone and iPad, and will be available on Mac in the coming months. Camera Control is available on iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max. Information about places of interest will be available in the US first, with support for additional regions in coming months.