WWDC 2024: The main star of Apple's event artificial intelligence

The main star of this year's "Worldwide Developers Conference", which took place on Monday, was the new UI platform "Apple Intelligence". Apple also showed some innovations in the field of its operating system. iPhone users will thus get help in writing text summaries, creating original images and finding relevant data when they need it. Even Siri, once a pioneer of digital assistants, will get a new look.

Apple is chasing the competition in the UI race, especially here we mean players like Alphabet and Microsoft, both of which are quite a few steps ahead of Apple. As usual, Apple is betting on a refined user interface and, of course, a loyal customer base in order to narrow the gap with competitors or even overtake them.

"This is the moment we have all been working together for a long time", says the senior vice president Craig Federighi, who leads the field of software development. He described "Apple Intelligence" as a "UI for everyone else", which in his presentation somehow relied on the old slogan of Mac computers.

The partnership with OpenAI will allow users of Apple devices to access ChatGPT for free via the Siri assistant. "Apple Intelligence" is coming with updates a bit later this year, while certain features, like the ability to control apps via Siri, won't be available until next year. Support for other languages, besides English, is coming only at the end of the year.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was at Monday's event and wrote on the X Network that he was "very excited to be working with Apple." Although the ChatGPT integration will be free, paid OpenAI subscribers will get additional features over time. Apple, which has also discussed using the Gemini model with Google, said it plans to support other services later.

An important part of the presentation was devoted to the topic of user data security. Among other things, Federighi pointed out that the system called "Private Cloud Compute" will ensure that the user's data is always safe when it is sent to data centers. "Apple Intelligence" will support UI emojis called "Genmojiji" and automatic photo editing, among other things.

Apple iOS 18 and iPadOS will receive improvements in personalization, productivity and communication. Here's some news:

• The updated home screen will allow users to place icons wherever they want. App icon colors will also be able to change and adjust based on whether the user is using light or dark mode.
• The new "Control Center" includes support for "third-party" controls, more settings pages, and the appearance will also be updated.
• iPhone 14 and newer models will get support for sending text messages via satellites. Until now, this has only been available in emergencies.
• The “Messages” application will allow you to schedule the sending of a text message.
• Users will be able to set special effects for individual words and phrases, instead of for entire texts - for example shaking the word. Rich support for writing texts is also coming, which will facilitate communication between Apple and Android users.
• The “Passwords” application will manage passwords, login information and Wi-Fi settings.
• The updated "Photos" application will improve the ability to edit photos with the help of artificial intelligence.
• Face ID lock will be available for all applications.
• For the first time, the iPad will get a “Calculator” app, which will allow people to solve handwritten math equations with the Apple Pencil. The absence of this iPad app has been a long-standing issue among customers, and the new feature was met with applause at Monday's event.

Despite Apple taking the lead in the AI race in 2011 when Siri was released, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa quickly took over. Of course, artificial intelligence took its biggest leap at the end of 2022, when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT.

Services from Google, Microsoft and Meta have boomed, and Samsung, Apple's biggest rival in smartphone development, integrated Google's UI features into its devices earlier this year.

Apple's first man, Tim Cook, is under a lot of pressure to put the iPhone maker back on top. The pressures are even greater due to the drop in sales, as the company's revenues have decreased in the last five out of six quarters. Mainly at the expense of lower demand for smartphones, where the drop is greatest in China.

On Monday, Cook said artificial intelligence will be "the next big step for Apple." This will not make money directly at the expense of new UI functionality, but they hope that users will become more loyal due to the new features of the devices and that they will buy and exchange products faster.

"We think that Apple Intelligence will be an indispensable part of products that already play a key role in our lives", he added.