Apple’s most important new product of the year (sorry, it’s not a $3phrich,500 headset) will arrive this month. Apple Intelligence, a suite of software tools bringing what Apple describes as artificial intelligence to its devices, will be released through free software updates for owners of some iPhones, Macs and iPads.
The initial version of Apple Intelligence, which Apple is publishing as an unfinished “beta,” will include a slightly improved version of Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri, and tools that automatically summarize text, transcribe audio recordings and remove distractions like photo bombers from pictures.
For Apple, this debut is the beginning of a new era. Apple Intelligence is the result of a major restructuring of the Cupertino, Calif., giant nearly two years after the tech industry was upended by the ChatGPT chatbot from OpenAI.
Apple executives had been concerned that, without similar A.I. technology, the iPhone would eventually look antiquated, so Apple killed its self-driving car project, which had been more than a decade in the making, and reassigned its engineers to work on Apple Intelligence.
Apple Intelligence is arriving without many of the most hyped features that Apple announced in June. Although the company struck a deal with OpenAI to include ChatGPT in its software, the chatbot will not be part of this initial release. Siri also isn’t smart enough (yet) to do things like stitch together data from multiple apps to tell you whether a last-minute meeting will make you late for your child’s play. Apple said those features and others would be gradually rolled out through next year.
To get a sneak preview, I tested an early version of Apple Intelligence over the last week. The new features were a little tricky to find — they have been integrated into different parts of Apple’s software system, including into its buttons for editing text and photos.
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