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Here are the highlights from today's WWDC
From CNN's Clare Duffy
Apple's nearly two-hour-long Worldwide Developer Conference kick-off event was chock full of announcements.
By far the biggest news was Apple's introduction of its own artificial intelligence model, Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence will be able to draw from users' personal information on their devices to answer their questions, all in a privacy-conscious way.
Here are some of the highlights from today's event, which also included operating system upgrades for the company's various products, including iPhones, iPads, Macs and more.
- Siri gets smarter. With Apple Intelligence, Siri will be able to answer questions using information from across multiple apps. For example, it could prep you for an upcoming meeting by telling you the time and location from your calendar, summarizing the prep document your colleague sent in an email and telling you the weather so you know how to dress.
- AI-generated emojis. Apple Intelligence will make it possible for users to create their own emojis with text prompt in iMessage, as well as to generate non-photorealistic images to send in conversations.
- OpenAI Partnership. In situations where OpenAI's technology is better suited to answer a users' question, Apple will let them opt-in to searching ChatGPT instead. The integration will work directly from their Apple device, even if a user doesn't have a ChatGPT account.
- Hidden apps. New privacy updates for iPhone will let users "lock" certain apps so only they can open them using Face ID, Touch ID or their passcode. Users can also "hide" apps so they don't show up on their home screen and no media from those apps appear elsewhere across their system.
- Real-time call transcripts. iPhone users will now be able to record and create transcripts of calls right from the phone app. All parties to the call will be notified when it is being recorded.
- Gesture controls for AirPods. With new gesture controls, AirPods users will be able to answer or decline a call with just a nod or shake of their head.
- Apple watch health monitoring. New vital sign tracking on Apple Watch can notify users when they may be getting sick, based on signals like body temperature and heart rate.
A Q&A with Tim Cook
By CNN's Samantha Kelly
Following the keynote, Tim Cook and other Apple executives participated in a Q&A to discuss privacy and security and why it decided to partner with OpenAI.
Cook once again emphasized that Apple is taking privacy and security very seriously with the rollout of the new technology.
“We think AI’s role is to not replace users but to empower them,” he said. “When you think about what’s possible, it has to be integrated with the experience and be intuitive, and informed by your personal context and knowledge of you. If you’re going to do that, there’s a lot of responsibility.”
Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, said the company chose to align with OpenAI to support the new tools because they’re best equipped to meet the needs of Apple’s customers at the moment.
OpenAI announces new executive hires
From CNN's Ramishah Maruf
As Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to its devices, the artificial intelligence company also introduced two new hires.
Sarah Friar, formerly the CEO of Nextdoor, is joining as chief financial officer. Kevin Weil is joining as chief product officer. Weil was most recently president, of product and business at Planet Labs, an earth imaging company.
“Sarah and Kevin bring a depth of experience that will enable OpenAI to scale our operations, set a strategy for the next phase of growth, and ensure that our teams have the resources they need to continue to thrive," CEO Sam Altman said in a release Monday.
The announcement comes after upheaval within its staff, such asthe high-profile exit of an OpenAI executive focused on safety, Jan Leike, in May. OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever also said thathe would leavethe company.
Apple stock falls Monday, despite AI news
From CNN's Clare Duffy
Apple shares (AAPL) ended the day down 1.9% on Monday, despite the highly anticipated artificial intelligence updates the company announced during WWDC.
The disappointing stock performance is a reminder of how Apple's share price growth has lagged behind AI competitors over the past year, as rivals have moved more quickly to articulate an AI strategy.
Apple's share price has grown just 5% compared to a year ago. By comparison, Microsoft shares are up nearly 29% compared to this time last year, Google shares have risen 42% and Nvidia shares have soared 208% year-over-year.
Apple's Phone and Notes apps will let you transcribe phone calls and other recordings automatically
From CNN's Brian Fung
For the note-takers among us, Apple's new AI features include the ability to record and transcribe audio. Those capabilities will be in Apple's phone and notes apps, and when an Apple user starts to record a phone call, all the call participants will be notified automatically, Apple said. (The notifications are important because it can be illegal in some states to record calls without the consent of other participants.)
These features are similar to something that Google has supported for years in Google Voice, where voicemail and calls can be recorded and transcribed.
What's the difference between Apple Intelligence and ChatGPT?
From CNN's Brian Fung
Monday's keynote saw two big AI reveals from Apple: The unveiling of Apple Intelligence —the name for Apple's proprietary suite of AI capabilities— as well as a partnership with OpenAI that will integrate ChatGPT into many Apple devices. Where does one end, and the other begin?
The key distinction appears to fall in the line between what Apple described as "world knowledge" and "personal context." Where Apple Intelligence will excel is combining information about you and your relationships and using those insights to streamline your everyday workflows —calling up old photos from an event or helping you create stylized AI-generated images of your contacts. Much of the processing of this data will happen within the Apple ecosystem, either on your Apple device or in special cloud-based Apple servers.
By comparison, Apple's integration with OpenAI will let you send specific queries about the wider world to ChatGPT. Apple said that while Apple Intelligence will understand a great deal about your personal life, other AI models — such as ChatGPT —may be better suited for responding to prompts related to more general information.
Any prompts to ChatGPT will be sent to the platform on an opt-in basis — users will have to make a conscious decision to do so. You'll also be able to use ChatGPT to create documents from within some Apple apps.
From the sound of it, the partnership will simply create an easier way for Apple users to access ChatGPT rather than providing unique or distinct AI features to Apple devices. Notably, you'll be able to use ChatGPT through Apple without creating a ChatGPT account, and any prompts sent to ChatGPT won't be logged and your data won't be stored, Apple said. The company added that it's working on integrating other AI startups' models, too.
So the two announcements could be seen as rather complementary.
Apple's AI tone adjustment features aim to never let you send another email that sounds rude
From CNN's Aditi Sangal
The new "Apple Intelligence" addition to Apple products promises to clean up users' writing. From class notes to blog posts to emails and cover letters — everything will be "perfectly crafted."
The tool "Rewrite" produces different versions of what users have written so they can choose the one they like best. It also helps out with the tone of the writing to make it sound "more friendly, professional or concise."
"Proofread" will focus on grammar, word choice and sentence structure.
The tools are present across apps.
AI is making Siri smarter
From CNN's Brian Fung
By adding artificial intelligence features to Siri, Apple's smart assistant will be able to do more, Apple said.
Those changes start with Siri's language recognition capabilities, which can detect when users correct themselves mid-sentence. Users will also be able to write instructions to Siri by tapping twice at the bottom of their lock screen, allowing them to interact with Siri without actually using their physical voice to speak to the assistant out loud, such as by texting it to set an alarm.
Other examples of actions users will be able to do with Siri include asking it to add a certain photo to a draft email; directing Siri to send photos from a recent event to a specific contact; or to share a summary of meeting notes in an email to a colleague.
All of that is possible, Apple said, because Apple Intelligence grabs information about you from your photos, calendar events, files and messages —including PDFs of concert tickets and links shared by contacts.
It will also be able to search through your photos for information that you're trying to put into an online form and add it for you, like taking the data from a photo of your driver's license and automatically inserting it into a form.
Here's how Apple will protect data privacy for its new AI tech
From CNN's Clare Duffy
Apple says most of the data processing for its new "Apple Intelligence" AI capabilities will be done directly on a user's device, to protect that user's data. The capability will mean Apple's AI technology is "aware of your personal data without collecting your personal information," according to the company.
In situations where more computing power is needed to address a user's query, Apple has developed what it calls "private cloud computing," where a user's information may be sent to a secure server to be processed but it won't be stored.
The security feature is important given Apple's reputation for prioritizing privacy and because other companies' AI tools have raised concerns about how user data might be used. Rivals, including OpenAI, have faced criticism for collecting the inputs to their tools in order to train their AI models.
"When you make a request, Apple intelligence analyzes whether it can be processed on device. If it needs greater computational capacity. It can draw on private cloud compute, and send only the data that’s relevant to your task to be processed on Apple silicon servers. Your data is never stored accessible to Apple. It’s used exclusively to fulfill requests, and just like your iPhone, independent experts can inspect the code that runs on these servers to verify this privacy promise," an Apple executive said.
