Apple WWDC 2024 RECAP updates: All the expected announcements including iOS 18, AI

It looks like Siri’s pairing with ChatGPT will be very cautious, making sure that users are aware at all times when they are getting input from OpenAI’s famous, and sometimes infamous, AI chatbot.

‘We want you to be able to use these external models without having to jump between different tools,’ Apple’s software engineering SVP Craig Federighi said of the plan to partner with ‘the pioneer and market leader, ChatGPT.’

In one example shown, Siri recommended that the iPhone user consult ChatGPT for further dinner recipe ideas, flagging all the way that these new answers were coming from OpenAI’s chatbot and advising users to ‘check important info for mistakes.’

Siri’s ChatGPT integration will begin with the latest offering, GPT-4o, for free.

Apple promises that, unlike ordinary usage of ChatGPT direct from OpenAI’s platform, users’ private information and their queries will not be logged or stored.

However, an option will exist to login to your existing ChatGPT account to use the service’s pro features, which will log information as per its usual terms of service.

While touting the next few days of WWDC events for Apple’s developers, Tim Cook summarized this cautious approach to ChatGPT integration and Apple’s new AI offerings in general with an upbeat spin.

‘Built in a uniquely Apple way, we think Apple Intelligence is going to be indespensible to the products that already play such an integral role in our lives,’ Cook said.

Apple’s devices will have their own ability to make Midjourney or Stable Diffusion-style generative images, with some guardrails to keep things safe and on-brand for the family friendly tech company.

Called ‘Image Playground,’ the app will only be making more cartoony illustrations, likely as a way to minimize the risks of disinformation or worse abuse potential.

Image Playground, the company noted, will also integrate with the Notes app, helping add fun visual flare or helpful, instructive images to your entries.

Image Playground, which will also have a pro version for developers, will also be capable of working with users’ camera roll photos and other material to help you make personalized art of yourself, your friends and family.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, quite nearly as a veiled dig at the company’s rivals, emphasized the company’s own strict criteria for when AI is mature enough to be worth integrating into their product’s operating system.

Cook outlined five main criteria for what the tech giant is calling ‘Apple Intelligence.’ The AI will need to be ‘powerful,’ meaning actually useful, ‘intuitive,’ meaning easy to use, ‘integrated’ and ‘personal,’ meaning that it builds off an awareness of your own private data, while also being ‘private,’ meaning that Apple won’t be harvesting and storing your private information.

From the tutorials, thus far, Apple Intelligence will be focused on coming up with useful reminders for users, offering proofreading and information summarizing help, and generally making Apple’s digital assistant Siri smarter and more lifelike.

‘Powerful intelligence goes hand-in-hand with powerful privacy,’ Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi explained.

As a result, Apple Intelligence will be keeping users’ personal information on their devices rather than uploading it to an Apple-owned cloud, promising that their tech will be ‘aware of your personal data, without collecting your personal data.’

Apple’s new M chips, the company noted, is what allows them to run these complex AI on users’ devices, instead of remotely on some gigantic server farm.

Built with the iPad and Apple Pencil in mind, a new update to its tried and true Calculator app looks like a life-changing way for both students and adults to do basic number-crunching.

Called ‘Math Notes,’ the feature will adds Excel-style calculation functionality to a blank canvas that you then write to directly. It will let you write equations that will then solve themselves, or build tables for computations in a way that’s much closer to how an ordinary person tries to solve a math problem themselves on an ordinary piece of paper.

Time will tell what unexpected glitches may occur, but the ping pong tournament and ping pong physics examples that Apple showed off were impressive.

It was a tossed-off remark, but the introduction of Rich Communication Services (RSC) text messaging protocal means that Apple’s Messages app will be better integrated during communications with Android phones.

Two new features announced just now at WWDC are already garnering raves online.

The first, auto-scheduling for text messages via Apple’s Messages app, takes a feature that has made emailing easier for remote work and teamwork and redeploys it for smoothing out personal life interactions also. Apple’s example was automating a birthday text, but there’s guaranteed to be many ways it helps the average person.

The second, more elaborate innovation, allows users to send messages via satellite when they are out of range of traditional cell phone or wireless internet networks. The added connectivity is likely to literally save lives during natural disaters or accidents that occur in remote areas with low connectivity.

In addition to the expected unveiling of the headset’s new operating system, Apple has announced that the breathtakingly high-tech and expensive VR goggles will be rolling out across the world this summer.

On June 28, the Vision Pro will hit Asia, going on the market in China, Japan and Singapore.

Then, on July 12, the goggles will be coming to the rest of the west, becoming available in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, and Germany.

After an intentionally cute ‘skydiving’ intro, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook kicked things off with a sprawling teaser for their in-house entertainment streamer’s offerings for Apple TV+.

Packed with A-list Hollywood talent, from George Clooney and Brad Pitt in the upcoming film ‘Wolfs,’ to Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’ the tech company seems to be throwing its weight around and spending big to gain an edge on its competitors.

On the site formerly known as Twitter, Tesla mogul Elon Musk’s X platform, reactions to the months of rumors about Apple’s plan to brand its own collaboration with OpenAI as ‘Apple Intelligence’ has provoked everything from blind boosterism to whithering contempt.

Jason Fried, CEO of 37signals which makes project management software Basecamp, told his followers that ‘the “artificial” in AI has always felt wrong’ as he praised Apple’s simple branding exercise as a ‘great name.’

Others posted memes clearly meant to ding the company for taking an obvious route they found more unimaginative than elegant or clever.

As one former data scientist for Twitter put it, criticizing the gush of praise for the name, ‘You people are so incredibly easy to impress. It boggles the mind.’

Nothing official has been said yet about Apple’s agreement with OpenAI to incorporate the Microsoft-owned company’s ChatGPT into its well-known iOS voice-based personal assistant Siri, but here’s what we know going into WWDC 2024 today.

Apple’s vice president of corporate development, Adrian Perica, has been quietly leading the charge to integrate the two, according to anonymous sources who spoke to the New York Times — with the hope that the end result will be a Siri that’s more conversational and versatile.

Unlike its rivals however, Apple’s core brand has been built on being intuitive and easy to use for the average person, so the company is the least likely to take any big risks with its AI offering.

‘Apple is pretty conservative when it comes to everything, so I don’t know that they will “wow” people,’ Carolina Milanesi, president of Creative Strategies, a tech research firm, told the Times.

‘But they have to do this because it will be how we interact with technology going forward,’ she said.

After months of anticipation, the wait is finally almost over for Apple fans, as the tech giant’s annual tech event is about to commence.

Apple says the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), which kicks off today at Apple Park in California, will be an ‘extraordinary week of technology.’