Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote was jam packed with its new AI features and tools coming across all platforms. Here’s a rundown of what to expect.
Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote has come and gone. It was quite a memorable one, starting with an action-packed opening sequence and then drilling deep down into the new features coming to all of Apple’s latest software updates.
One of the biggest focuses this year was on Apple Intelligence, which is Apple’s version of the AI-powered tools that are behind those new features. You may have missed all of the cool new AI things coming, so here’s a rundown of it all.What is Apple Intelligence?
In short, Apple Intelligence is “AI for the rest of us”. While AI has been trending in the mobile industry recently, Apple could be the one to make it actually mainstream and not just something among the techies.
Apple Intelligence is a new AI system that is “comprised of highly capable large language and diffusion models specialized for your everyday tasks,” according to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering.
“This is a moment we’ve been working towards for a long time,” Federighi said during the WWDC keynote. “Apple intelligence is the personal intelligence system that puts powerful generative models right at the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It draws on your personal context to give you intelligence.” The machine learning system promises to enable your mobile and laptop devices to “understand and create language, as well as images, and take action for you to simplify interactions across your apps.”
Apple covered a lot of these features in quick succession during the keynote, so it would be easy to miss a thing or two. In short, Apple Intelligence will help make your life a little easier — even with Siri.Prioritize notifications
I’m sure that you get bombarded with notifications throughout the day — I know I do. Sometimes, it can really get out of hand, and I just have so many that I don’t know what’s actually important.
Apple Intelligence will prioritize your notifications so that the most important and crucial ones are at the top of the stack. For example, during the keynote, it was shown that time-sensitive notifications, such as dinner invites, work meetings, and an Instacart delivery, were at the top of an iPhone’s notification stack. This would also be useful for particularly active group chats.
There is also a new Focus mode called Reduce Interruptions. When this is on, only notifications that may need immediate attention will show up, such as when you need to pick your child up from daycare.Writing Tools to make you a better writer
iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia will have new Writing Tools built in systemwide. With these new tools, users are able to rewrite, proofread, and even summarize text across a multitude of apps — including Mail, Notes, Pages, and even third-party apps.
Rewrite utilizes Apple Intelligence to rewrite what has already been written into different versions. This can help you adjust the tone to suit the audience and task at hand, such as a professional tone for a cover letter or some humor to a party invitation.
Proofread will check grammar, word choice, and sentence structure while also providing suggestions for edits (and even explanations of why that edit should be made). Accepting these edits is quick and easy, though it’s also optional — just a helpful tool.
Summarize allows users to select text and get a recap of the key information in a digestible paragraph, bullet points, table, or basic list. Summaries can also be found at the top of emails in the Mail app, along with priority emails at the top of the list.
