Apple will launch generative AI features later this year, but nobody knows what that means

Generative AI is all the rage, and companies across the world are all trying to incorporate new features that make use of it. While Apple has typically marched to the beat of its own drum, it turns out that not even the Cupertino giant is exempt. Tim Cook, in a recent quarterly earnings call, said that Apple’s own generative AI will come “later this year”, but what that means is anyone’s guess.

If it were to come anywhere, by the sounds of things, it’s iOS 18 that will pack some generative AI features. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg has said that this is “one of the biggest iOS updates” if not the biggest, and will feature improvements to both Siri and Messages. Given how far Siri has been behind the times in recent years, it seems likely that we will actually get some Siri improvements for a change.

Why Siri needs to improve

It was behind before the AI revolution

If we think back to Siri over the last few years, it’s really been behind the rest of the industry. It faltered behind the Google Assistant and even Alexa, to the point that it wasn’t uncommon to use one of those assistants if you had an iPhone instead of using Siri. It’s long been expected that Apple would use generative AI to improve on its digital voice assistant, and Gurman has said these changes should finally improve it.

Generative AI isn’t always useful for a voice assistant though, and it needs to be done in a clever way. For example, asking ChatGPT a question will come with a ton of preamble and context, when all I want is the answer. The same can be said for any generative AI platform, and it’s straight up annoying. Apple will almost certainly want to avoid this if it were to incorporate anything generative in Siri.

There’s also just a ton that Siri can’t actually do. There aren’t many offline features that it supports aside from timers, and that’s been the same since its official launch with the iPhone 4S in 2011. Siri was ahead of its time when it arrived, but it still feels like some of its functionality is set in a time where Apple was still using the iPhone’s dock connector to charge its devices.

What generative AI can bring to iMessage

Automatic replies, just like on Android

Source: Google

iMessage is said to be working on features to integrate generative AI into iMessage too, and what that looks like is anyone’s guess. The best guess that we can muster is that it will be something akin to what’s already available on Android through the Google Messages app. In other words, automatically generated replies based on the context of the conversation. This is called Magic Compose, and it looks like Apple may be working on their own competitor.

What this essentially would mean is that you could generate responses in-conversation with iMessage, replacing the need to type out a full reply. You can either go with suggesttions, or type a message close to what you want but have a proper message generated for you. It’s not confirmed that this is what it would entail, but it’s likely that it’s something along those lines. Apple is starting from the backfoot, and Tim Cook seemed particularly pleased with the AI features that the company was working on.

Other features that we could see could include automatic note summarization, playlist generation in Apple Music, wallpaper generation, and anything else that we’ve seen crop up on other devices so far. None of this is confirmed, but Apple clearly wants to get AI right if it’s going to be introducing it at all.

What the future of AI may mean for Apple

Apple normally likes to think differently

Apple does what it wants, and it’s not typically one to cave to industry pressure in a way that other companies may. When Google or Samsung are in a tit-for-tat battle of features, Apple tends to be on the outside. Likewise, the same goes for its Macs and its iPads, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with AI. Apple is now playing catch-up, and it looks like the company sees viability in AI to the point that it wants to makes its own features too.

What I’m especially interested to see is whether Apple does anything unique with AI. The company sometimes does incredibly unique things, but other times, it introduces features that have been standard with competitors for a long time; it just sometimes will execute them better. In that sense, there could well be something interesting cooking in Apple’s labs, but that doesn’t mean it will be any better or more useful than what we’ve already seen.

We’ll be watching and waiting to see what iOS 18 brings to the table. We expect it to launch sometime in September alongside the iPhone 16 series, but to be honest, with Apple, you can never be too sure.