This week, Apple has released a barrage of information promoting Apple Intelligence, promising an AI-powered transformation of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Even after all the announcements, there are still plenty of unanswered questions from Apple. But while I'm skeptical about how much of Apple Intelligence is playing catch-up to Google and OpenAI, that doesn't mean there weren't some interesting ideas or fun innovations on display. Below are five ways the “Glowtime” event improved my opinion of Apple Intelligence.
1. Give Siri a brain
Yes, the Siri update that Apple has been vaunting has been a long time coming, but that doesn't make it uninteresting. I've long since stopped using Siri for anything other than the most basic tasks related to the weather and the stopwatch. A native voice assistant that can actually converse and act better or even better than its rivals could well change the way I and many other Apple device owners interact with the original voice assistant.
Even just being able to keep up with the pace of my speech and remember context between tasks would be a big deal. The link to written directions so I can switch between voice and text is a nice improvement, too. The sheen of Siri’s visual aspect (hence the title of the Glowtime event) puts a bow on the whole thing. It reminds me of when Apple Maps was unlinked from Google data and was a complete mess for a while before becoming useful again. Sometimes innovation just means being able to meet the moment. Let’s hope the next big update isn’t nearly two decades away.
2. AI eyes
One particularly underrated aspect of Apple Intelligence is how it lets your device better define what the camera captures. The new Visual Intelligence and Camera Control features use AI to answer questions and explain objects and places around you, including contextual information like geographic location and time. It will even link up with ChatGPT or Google to explain what it sees. Sure, it’s a lot like Google Lens, and maybe it’s just a nice way to speed up finding information about what’s going on near you. Still, if you’re vision-impaired, this is the kind of accessibility feature that could really increase your independence. It was this feature that convinced a vision-impaired friend of mine that he should get the iPhone 16.
3. Artificial intelligence is writing right now
ChatGPT and its many rivals and imitators have focused on text composition and editing as their core feature, so Apple showing off the new AI writing tools was, in a way, just saying, “We can do that, too.” But building text summarization, word correction, and related tasks directly into Mail, Notes, Pages, and other apps removes a small but very real friction that has always bothered me a bit. The new tools mean you won’t have to go through that extra step of copying text into a different app or relying on an API that may or may not work as well as the app if you want to apply AI editing or summarization to it. Again, increasing accessibility for people who might not be power users is a good thing in my book.
4. Keep your AI private
In this regard, Apple can boast that AI fits seamlessly with its product culture, which has always made privacy a key selling point. Apple Intelligence simply extends that way of thinking by processing most AI requests directly on the device or through its private cloud computing when the task requires more computational power. This is no small matter, considering that much of the debate around AI revolves around who can obtain people’s data and use it to train AI models or for related purposes. Apple claims to have found the perfect balance between AI flexibility and data privacy, which is a way of thinking about AI that is, frankly, refreshing.
5. Genmoji Giants
I saved arguably the most unique part of Apple Intelligence for last because, frankly, there's no real comparison between other AI developers and Genmoji.
The ability to create custom emoji is a fun take on AI-powered image makers, but being able to insert Genmojis into messages, emails, and other communications just like traditional emojis is where Apple scores a clear win over even what Google Gemini and Android can do right now. It’s not a life-changing update, but like the rest of Apple’s Intelligence features, it adds to the other reasons people might want to buy an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. (Inserted Genmoji of a T-Rex staring at an iPhone while surfing a wave.)
