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Like all years, Apple kicked off WWDC 2024, its annual conference for developerswhere he presented the news coming to iOS 18and also announced Apple Intelligenceyour generative artificial intelligence platform for your devices.
The first version of Apple Intelligence will be available this winter in Englishas confirmed by the company at the end of the presentation.
Manzana will allow Siri to refer a request to ChatGPT if the system understands that that engine could have a better response; Siri better understands queries related to the user’s daily life; for the rest you can offer to appeal to ChatGPT, free of charge. Apple opens play to other generative AI platforms to integrate with Siri; They could be Gemini, from Google, or Llama 3, from Meta (which they will probably pay to be there, like Google now pays Apple $20 billion a year to be its official search engine).
With the Apple Intelligence platform it will be possible generate new emojis (genmojithe company tells you) and create new images using the company’s engineDigital Playground, starting with a brief description and then following the recommendations for style, background, etc., to have the new image to share.
Apple Intelligence has a feature called Image Wand which works very similar to the Microsoft Cocreator announced a few days ago for Windows 11: it allows create an image from a sketchimprove it, expand it, etc.
The company has another function, Clean Up Tool, which allows you to delete elements from an image (a stranger in the background of a familiar image), using artificial intelligence to simulate the missing information. And it allows you to search for a specific element within the photos and videos stored on the device, identifying what appears in the photos; Both tools – photo editing, content search in images and videos – are similar to those offered or announced by Google and Samsung in recent months.
With iOS 18, the new version of Siri, interaction will now be more natural: just like what happens with the latest versions of ChatGPT or Geminiit’s possible speak to him without having to respect a specific structure in the sentence so that he understands us. You can also type a query. And Siri understands what we have visible on the screen to have a context of the query, if relevant, similar to what Google offers with Gemini.
It also uses the information it has about our lives (with appointments, contacts, photos, where we were, etc.) to understand what we are asking of it when faced with a query, or when it is not helping with a task. And she is able to remember the thread of previous orders, so she doesn’t have to start from scratch with each order and can have something similar to a conversation with Siri.
Siri will also be available on iPadOS and macOS.
As with other generative AI tools, it is possible ask you to change the tone of a text (in an email, for example) to have more formal or informal alternatives; also, have a summary of a long textanalyzed by Apple Intelligence to find the salient points.
The email client will show, in the Inbox, a summary of each message next to the subject, to get a better idea of which ones are urgent or important, and which ones aren’t. The same with the notifications: it will synthesize the content so that we have more clarity What is happening.
Tim Cook appears on the scene to talk about generative artificial intelligence, and what the company wants to do with it: it has to be powerful, intuitive, integrated into your personal and private life. Name: Apple Intelligence, as it had been leaked in recent days. The company insists on describing Apple Intelligence as oriented to the user’s needs: it understands written orders, images, personal context, and will be able to generate an action based on this.
In addition to being able to ask, for example, to find the photos in which we are with that person, or to play the podcast that we were listening to the other day, or to search for the emails in which we talk about a topic (something that is also possible with the artificial intelligence platforms of Google, Microsoft or OpenAI), the company insists that all processing will be done on the deviceand everything the system learns from us (to understand the context in which we give it an order that includes, for example, naming a family member) will not be shared with third parties.
In cases where, due to its complexity, the assigned task requires using greater computing power (that is, it has to be transferred to a remote server), it will be done in a private cloud, unique for each user, to which Apple has no way to access.
With macOS, Apple allows you to show the iPhone screen and interact with it from the screen of a Mac, similar to what Microsoft does with Android; It is possible to activate applications, use them, etc. It even allows you to display notifications that arrive on your phone on the computer screen.
macOS Sequoia also allows you to organize windows at predefined sizes, like Windows 11, occupying half a screen, a quarter, a third, etc.
Apple laughs at itself for a moment: the calculator finally arrives on iPadOS, an absence that for years generated multiple memes. But in addition to the standard calculator, the new version of iPadOS allows you to enter numbers manually, the system will interpret them, and even generate the answer by imitating our handwriting and the way we write down the numbers; It is even possible to modify a typed variable, and see how the handwritten result changes. It will be called Math Notes.
It also arrives on iPadOS Smart Script, which uses a system that learns our handwriting and improves it as we write; The idea is that on those occasions when we write in a messy manner, the system will adjust it so that it looks neater. It also corrects spelling errors, and allows you to modify the text as if it were entirely digital.
Apple did not want to stop mentioning all the new features that its different platforms bring this year, but it is mentioning all at an unusual speed, with very little depth; It is partly due to the breadth of devices that the company accumulates, but it is also probably associated with the main course that the company is theoretically preparing, related to artificial intelligence, which (we hope) will be talked about later.
Vitals is the new app that comes to the Apple Watch, along with another to help pregnant women, with a summary of the vital data that the watch has for the last few days, and alerts for unusual changes.
With iOS 18 now It will be possible to interact with Siri using head gestures (nodding, denying) for when Siri notifies us of something (a call) and we don’t want to talk. Apple also promises improvements to Spatial Audio and ambient sound reduction for its AirPods Pro.
Apple too redesigned the phone’s photo album, with a new design that allows you to have, in addition to the chronological list, a series of albums created by each person to highlight groups of images that they want to have on hand. It also allows you to organize by location, by person, thematically, etc.
Apple maps now topographic maps will be addedwith the possibility of having the map content offline, and having movement guides, ideal for those who trek.
There is also a way to pass money to another user with the Wallet app: all you have to do is bring two phones together, with the same gesture with which contacts were previously exchanged.
Game Mode in iOS 18 reduces the task activity that the device does in the backgroundto ensure that the game has all system resources available to the user.
Apple confirmed that iMessage and SMS will be able to send and receive messages via satellite, expanding the satellite connectivity service that debuted last year; Thus, it will allow an improvement in the way of staying connected when the person is in a place without connection.
One of the new features that the company has for the iPhone is, in iOS 18, the possibility of reordering the location of application access, as Android has offered since day one, in the initial view of the iPhoneso that, for example, they do not cover a photo.
You can also change iPhone lock screen shortcutsto change the access to the camera and the flashlight for others, and modify the action that triggers the side button of the latest iPhone.
iOS 18 too adds applications that are only visible or accessible with a password, something that Android recently incorporated: Apple created it in such a way that the content that those applications have is hidden from the phone’s search engine and other applications; You can even hide Bluetooth connectivity from specific accessories.
Apple announces several new features for developers to create content and applications for Vision Pro glasses; It included a stereoscopic video that had Buenos Aires as the recording point.
VisionOS 2 includes automatic conversion of 2D photos to 3D, new virtual screen dimensions and support for two 4K monitors, among other things.
In addition, at the end of the month it will arrive in several countries in Europe and Asia: China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
