Apple introduces AI to its products at WWDC | CNN Business (2024)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A large screen shows Apple CEO Tim Cook during an announcement of new products on the Apple campus in Cupertino, Calif., today.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The iPhone's new AI tools will let you create personalized, non-photorealistic AI-generated pictures of people.

Apple outlined a few ways AI will add more personalization to the iPhone experience.

For example, users will be able to create personalized photos, such as taking a picture of your mom and making it into a stylized, cartoon-y version, adding a superhero cape. It can take action across apps, including asking the software to pull up all photos of a family member, and retrieve and analyze data from across your apps, such as factoring in what’s on your screen like email or a calendar.

If a meeting is being rescheduled, Apple Intelligence can process relevant personal data and see the email your kid sent days before about a recital, alerting users if there may be a conflict.

Apple said it is pushing its products into a new era with the introduction of what it’s calling “Apple Intelligence.”

The company said it’s been impressed with the generative AI tools already on the market, but wants to take this a step further by making it personalized for Apple users, with privacy in mind.

He added: “Most importantly, it has to understand you and be grounded in your personal context, like your routine, your relationships, your communications, and more. And, of course, it has to be built with privacy, from the ground up.”

Apple announced a new iPad feature called “Smart Script” that will improve the appearance of your handwriting in notes in real-time. It can recreate your handwriting from your notes, so if you’re scribbling notes quickly, the software can clean them up in a way that still looks true to your style.

“It’s still your own writing, but it looks smoother, straighter and more legible,” an Apple executive said.

Users can also copy and paste text into a note, and it will appear in their handwriting. If you need to erase a few words, you can simply scribble through them with the Apple Pencil and they’ll disappear.

Apple showed off its latest MacOS software called Sequoia, with a handful of new games, productivity features and more. Here’s a snapshot of a few notable tools:

iPhone mirroring will bring iPhone alerts directly to the laptop that show up directly next to Mac notifications.

MacOS will also support the ability to arrange windows open on screen in certain areas, such as side by side – a concept popularized by Microsoft Windows.

Video conferencing is getting a presenter preview, so users can see what they’re going to share before they share it. Apple is also introducing background replacements on calls, so users can hide the laundry behind them.

Apple announced its calculator app is coming to the iPad, creating the biggest audience reaction yet. (Yes, the iPad never had the Calculator app until now, in the month of June in the year 2024).

In addition to doing basic math through the app, users with an Apple Pencil can now take “math notes” to enable more complex math such as physics problems. For example, if you you write down a math problem with Apple Pencil, it will solve it for you.

Apple announced the release of iPad OS 18, which also includes the latest iOS features announced today, like new ways to personalize the home screen, customize control center and an updated Photos app.

IpadOS 18 also redesigned the Apple pencil and updated apps to work with the distinct capabilities of iPad. Users can expect to see a new floating tab bar for easier navigation and a different way of browsing through documents in apps like Pages and Keynote.

Apple’s WatchOS 11 will monitor your vitals even more closely, combining health aspects like heart rate, body temperature, and sleep to helpfully guess whether or not you’ve been doing things like drinking alcohol before going to bed.

Apple is also adding a training mode to track how intensity impacts workouts over time. The new tools blend weight and age to come up with an “effort rating” on the summary page, ranging from 1 (easy) to 10 (difficult). It also blends other metrics, such as workout duration, to let you know it’s opinion on if you’re training too hard or need to step it up a notch.

Users can also check in on your “vital” metrics, which provides more details on your overall health and notifying you when you may be getting sick. At the same time, the Health app’s ability to flag when heart rate is up will be more more supportive for people like pregnant users.

Apple’s share price (AAPL) has ticked downward as the WWDC progresses. Just over half an hour into the event, shares were down more than 1.5% from Monday’s opening price.

Shareholders may be disappointed by the lack of artificial intelligence-related announcements so far, given the anticipation about the technology ahead of the event. They may also be cluing in to some of the more tepid new features – color customization, for instance – that Apple has hyped in between more exciting announcements, such as the “Insight” feature for Apple TV+ that’s notably similar to an existing feature on Amazon Prime Video.

Apple is introducing a new feature to its TV app, adding “Insight,” which allows users to look up information about actors on screen with a swipe down on the remote. It will also display the song playing in the screen, and allow you the functionality of adding it to Apple Music.

AppleTV will also add vocal clarity through the feature of “enhanced dialogues,” which ensures that an actor’s dialogue will always cut through the noise and be audible.

Users can also get a theater-like experience with 21:9 format for projectors.

Screensavers will also allows users to choose what they want to view.

Apple is adding gesture support and “voice isolation” to its popular AirPods line.

The company said it will soon integrate more with Siri when wearing AirPods. For example, users can shake their head “yes” or “no” when a phone call comes through, if they don’t feel like talking out loud in a crowded elevator or a bus to a voice from an automated assistant that only you can hear.

Meanwhile, voice isolation will allow users on the other end of a call to hear better when someone is using AirPods in a noisy setting.

Apple users will be able to send and receive messages via satellite when they don’t have WiFi or cell connection.

It uses the same technology that powers emergency SOS via satellite.

The capability is available on iPhone 14 and newer models since, and powers all messages, emojis and tab backs.

iMessages sent over satellite are end-to-end encrypted, and also covers texts to non-Apple users.

iMessage is getting a bump, too. The company said it will soon let people respond to texts with more emoji, not just a thumbs up or double exclamation point.

Apple is also adding what it called one of the most requested features in iMessage: the ability to schedule messages.

With iOS 18, Apple will give users the option to “lock” certain apps, making them accessible only via Face ID, Touch ID or a user’s passcode. The feature could be especially helpful to protect apps like a banking app, an insurance app, or if you’re handing your phone over to show off photos or get someone’s phone number.

Users can now also “hide” an app, so it will show up only in a locked, hidden folder. And media from hidden apps won’t show up anywhere else on their phone.

Apple kicked off its iOS 18 portion of the event by highlighting new controls and personalization coming to iOS 18, including a revamped look for all icons when it goes into Dark Mode, a new tint color that compliments wallpaper and a redesigned control center that is available from the lock screen, so you can swap the flashlight icon for other tools.

Apple said it is also doubling down on privacy and security, such as the ability to hide apps in a locked folder, and new ways you can control what data is shared with apps, so users can decide which contacts developers can see.

Just a few months after its launch, Apple showed off a few upgrades coming to the software that powers its Vision Pro mixed reality headset.

Vision OS 2 promises to offer more rich experiences for users, such as a wider display for work stations, new hand gestures that let you check battery life or open up the home screen, and get deeper inside the photos in your library, thanks to advanced machine learning that provides more natural depth.

The company said it is also adding more capability for users to capture spatial videos.

Apple is also bringing Vision Pro to more countries, including the UK, China, Japan Singapore and Australia, this summer.

Tim Cook introducing the Apple developer conference WWDC today.

Apple started WWDC in an unexpected way: by discussing its five-year-old streaming platform, Apple TV+.

CEO Tim Cook touted the company’s highly-rated original programming on Apple TV+, although he did not mention if it was highly-watched compared to competitors like Netflix and Disney+. He also played a teaser reel highlighting forthcoming new series and movies, as well as new seasons of existing shows like Severance.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was spotted by CNN’s Samantha Kelly walking into the event with Apple employees, followed by president and co-founder Greg Brockman.

His appearance comes after speculation that Apple could announce a partnership with the ChatGPT maker as part of its effort to bring new AI tools to users.

Sam Altman arrives at WWDC event with Apple executives.

It’s a perfectly sunny day in Cupertino, California, where we’ve just arrived at the open-air keynote space near Apple’s headquarters.

Attendees arriving at Apple's WWDC event in Cupertino, California on Monday, June 10.

Developers are taking their seats on lawn chairs, as members of the press file in toward the back. (No Steve Jobs Theater today). Breakfast is served for attendees: pastries, eggs and coffee. Apple staffers greet everyone with cheer. It feels a bit like a garden party or even a wedding.

Some posts on X are noting (with photo evidence) that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is at the event along with Apple co-founder Steve “the Woz” Wozniak.

Apple is widely expected to announce a partnership with OpenAI.

Apple CEO Tim Cook during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, on June 5, 2023.

Apple was under pressure to excite users with its artificial intelligence announcements on Monday in part because it fell behind competitors in terms of articulating an AI strategy. Rivals have already rolled out impressive AI software tools, as well as AI-powered devices.

Here’s a look at some of Apple’s competition in the AI space:

Samsung: Earlier this year, Samsung rolled out its line of Galaxy S24 smartphones that include on-device generative AI capabilities. The phones can translate voice conversations and messages in real-time; users can ask questions about what they see on their screen; and AI editing capabilities make it easy to tweak photos.

Microsoft: In May, Microsoft introduced a line of computers that include advanced AI tools, as well as its AI assistant Copilot. Copilotcan help with tasks such as writing, keeping track ofemails in Outlook or designingpresentations in PowerPoint. The company also announced a controversial AI-powered feature called Recall that lets users quickly find things on their computer, such as documents, images and websites they’d viewed in the past.

Google: Google recently demonstrated how its AI technology, known as Gemini, will soon work across Gmail, Google Photos, Search and more. One new feature, called Ask Photos, allows users to search photos for deeper insights, such as what your license plate number is, by looking through their saved pictures. Another feature could enable the AI to “read” a textbook and turn it into a “lecture” featuring a natural-sounding teaching voice that could answer questions. The company has also begun rolling out AI summaries of search results at the top of Google Search for some queries.

OpenAI: OpenAI’s latest large language model, GPT-4o, is set to supercharge ChatGPT, effectively turning it into a digital personal assistant that can engage in real-time, spoken conversations. The new technology enables ChatGPT to do everything from providing real-time instructions for solving a math problem to telling (or even singing) a bedtime story. The model can also detect a user’s emotions based on their voice or facial expression, and can have a conversation across multiple different languages at once.

A set is displayed at the launch of the Apple Vision Pro at Apple The Grove in Los Angeles, California, on February 2, 2024. The Vision Pro, the tech giant's $3,499 headset, is its first major release since the Apple Watch nine years ago.

It’s been a year now since Apple unveiled the Vision Pro – and several months since it’s been out on the market, where it’s been met by a relatively tepid response from the gadget-buying public, if sales are any indication. Although the focus of the keynote will likely be about mobile software, generative AI could also come to the Vision Pro, potentially propelling the headset into another level of personalization and immersion and ushering in new use cases for businesses, particularly in the education and medical industries.

A Vision Pro with generative AI could mean communicating with the device through a virtual assistant, like a much smarter Siri, allowing users to ask questions about what they’re watching, for instance.

Other use cases might include real-time language translation, deeper collaboration in a workspace, or personalized fitness plans and guided meditations, according to experts. In the business world, it could help businesses train workers, enable employees to troubleshoot specific issues on the fly and more.

Upgrades could also boost sales of the pricey Vision Pro, which starts at $3,499 and has reportedly seen weak demand.

Apple has been long focused on consumer privacy and security, and thatwill likely also be reflected in Monday’s announcements.

Companies have acknowledged the serious risks posed by AI — from manipulation and the spread of misinformation to a loss of control that could potentially result in human extinction. Many researchers and AI workers haveexpressed the need to better educate the public about risks and protective measures.

Apple will need to address how using this type of technology will impact consumers.

(L-R) Apple CEO Tim Cook; OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Apple announced it will integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone and other devices later this year.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman walked into the event today with OpenAI’s president and co-founder Greg Brockman and Apple executives, bolstering the rumors of Apple partnering with OpenAI.

In the spring, Apple was reportedly discussing partnership opportunities with both OpenAI and Google to power its AI tools. But today the company inked a deal with the ChatGPT creator, a partnership that Apple started to explain on Monday.

Although the partnership could give the company a much-needed innovation boost, it could also hinder Apple’s control over product development and over the rules and regulation on data collection and privacy, said Reece Hayden, a senior analyst at ABI Research, before the event.

Apple aligning itself with a company and a technology that has yet to win public trust could pose some risks for Apple down the line. OpenAI continues to face criticism over some of its practices. This week, a group of current and formerOpenAI employees demandedartificial intelligence companies be far more transparent about AI’s “serious risks” — and that they protect employees who voice concerns about the technology they’re building.

The group called for AI companies to foster “a culture of open criticism” that welcomes, rather than punishes, people who speak up about their concerns, especially as regulationstruggles to catch up to the quickly advancing technology.

An employee counts US dollar currency as a customer pays cash for an Apple iPhone 15 series phone for sale at The Grove Apple retail store on release day in Los Angeles, California, on September 22, 2023.

No matter how Monday goes, Apple isn’t losing its status as a tech powerhouse anytime soon. The company earned more than $200 billion from iPhone sales alone last year, its stock (AAPL) is up 9% over the past year and it has a healthy services business that helps to balance some of the seasonality of hardware sales.

But analysts say that reinvigorating iPhone sales is key to Apple’s continued growth.

Investors are also counting on Apple to prove it can hold its own in the intensely competitive AI arms race at a time when many of its peers have much more clearly articulated a strategy for the next major wave of tech development.

People look at Apple's newiPhone15as itofficially goes on sale across China, at an Apple store in Shanghai, China, on September 22, 2023.

Apple hasn’t given users a significant reason to buy an upgraded iPhone for four years, since it rolled out 5G connectivity with the iPhone 12 — a worrying trend for the tech giant’s core business. That could change this week.

The iPhone brought in more than half of the company’s total revenue last year, but sales growth has lagged as customers have been slower to upgrade to new models. Longer upgrade cycles — the time between users’ new phone purchases — currently plague many device companies. But they’ve been especially painful for Apple as it grapples with compounding challenges that also include steepcompetition in the key China marketand alandmark antitrust lawsuit.

Apple is expected to announce new artificial intelligence featuresat its annual Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, which could supercharge itsproducts and bring Apple back into competition withmuch of the rest of the tech world that hasalready gone full steam ahead on AI. And no product is more important to Apple than the iPhone.

A woman uses an iPhone at theApplestoreatGrandCentralTerminalin New York City on April 14, 2023.

Perhaps the most obvious way Apple could embrace generative AI – the buzzy form of artificial intelligence that can provide thoughtful and thorough responses to questions – is through Siri, the company’s virtual assistant with a hit-or-miss track record. An integration withOpenAI’s latest ChatGPT-4o modelcould catapult Siri years forward by turning the feature into an iPhone chatbot.

This could enable Siri to perform specific tasks such as recalling a picture taken years ago on the device or answering detailed questions about the weather, the news or trivia. Over time, it could learn the user’s preferences and even personality, and respond accordingly.

Looking at how competitors have already introduced generative tools, AI-powered features for the iPhone could also assist users with summarizing and drafting emails or bringinginformationup on a device’s screen with a finger gesture. It will also likely adapt automatically and seamlessly to users, based on voice, audio and natural language, along with images and contextual cues.

Apple is expected to call its AI initiative “Apple Intelligence” and make the feature opt-in only. It will require an iPhone 15 Pro or a device with an M1 chip or newer, according to a newreportby Bloomberg, potentially enticing customers to finally upgrade devices.

A customer purchases the new iPhone 15 in store on September 22, 2023 in Milan, Italy.

Apple is on the verge of kicking off perhaps its most important event in years as it faces a gauntlet of challenges.

At its annual Worldwide Developers Conference starting Monday at 1:00 p.m. ET, the company is widelyexpectedto announce a partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI and unveil the first batch of generative AI tools coming to itsmobile operating system.

A big push into AI could spur growth for iPhone sales and services for years to come, as users are nowwaiting longer to upgrade their devices and an uncertain economic environment weighs on consumers, particularly in China. The company also faces regulatory scrutiny in Washington and waspassedthis week by chip maker Nvidia as the second-largest public company in the US.

But the timing is also noteworthy: Apple is not always first to adopt and integrate emerging technologies — it typically researches, develops and aims to perfect new tech for years before including it in new products. The speed at which the world is adopting generative AI is perhaps expediting the company’s need to have a smartphone with the most cutting-edge technology.

CNN will be reporting live from the event. It will also be livestreamedhere.

People shop at an Apple store in Pittsburgh on June 3.

When Apple released its most recent quarterly earnings results in early May, CNN’s Samantha Kelly reported that iPhone sales declined 10% as the company’s sales and profits were both challenged compared to the previous year.

Apple’s move: Announce a $110 billion share buyback, a move investors often like.

At the time, Apple CEO Tim Cook pointed to generative-AI tools as a way Apple can maintain its magic (and, therefore, sustain its $3 trillion market capitalization).

Samantha Kelly at that time reported:

“We will be talking about it more as we go through the weeks ahead,” Cook said.