Apple’s annual developer-focused event, the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), is about to take place, and a new report has highlighted the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) strategy that could be revealed during the event. The Cupertino-based tech giant is reportedly working to make its original virtual assistant Siri smarter by integrating artificial intelligence and adding what it calls “proactive intelligence.” Additionally, the iPhone maker is said to have partnered with OpenAI and plans to make a big AI announcement at WWDC 2024.
According to a report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter, Apple executives aren’t exactly sure about the speed at which Apple is working on AI. The feeling, internally, is reportedly that the gap between the company and its rivals is unlikely to close anytime soon. Concerns likely grew further after OpenAI and Google presented further advances in their AI models at respective events last week.
However, Apple will also reportedly bring some big guns when it hosts WWDC 2024 on June 10. One area of focus, as mentioned earlier, is Siri. A virtual assistant is capable of performing some basic tasks, but is deeply overshadowed by both speech and functionality when it comes to modern AI chatbots. The iPhone maker wants to speed it up by integrating AI. Gurman claims Siri will get AI-powered “proactive intelligence” features that include automatically summarizing iPhone notifications, providing a quick synopsis of news articles, transcribing voice memos and more. Existing features could also get an upgrade.
Apart from Siri, Apple may also introduce AI-powered editing tools with iOS 18. While details about these features are not known, it is believed that they could be similar to those found in the Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy S series smartphones. “Nor one of those features won’t impress people who’ve been using AI in Adobe Inc.’s apps for the past few months,” adds Gurman.
Finally, WWDC 2024 could also witness the official announcement of the partnership between Apple and OpenAI. The report claims that the two companies are already aligned to bring the latter’s AI technology to the former. While it’s not certain what those features might be, some rumors claim that the AI company could integrate ChatGPT with the iPhone and provide native access to its AI assistant.
