This year, the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is coming to Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Here’s what to expect as Siri gets smarter and every Apple device grows more intelligent:

1. Smarter Siri. Apple’s intelligent assistant will get a solid redesign in the upcoming, public version of iOS 10. Whispered commands will replace voice activation, invoking Siri automatically. Siri will also work beyond the iPhone: Apple Watches will incorporate Siri with a side button press, and more peripheral accessories can integrate with Apple’s smart assistant.

Shifting Gears: From Hardware to Software

Where typically new hardware – in this case, the M4-powered iPad Pro and Air – has led off the event, Apple managed to roll out its hardware upgrades earlier this year, clearing the deck for the WWDC spotlight to be on software – AI, most likely. ‘If rumours are to be believed, AI may be the true headline feature at WWDC 2024, making this year’s iteration the most significant for Apple in over a decade,’ concluded one analysis.

AI for Everyone: A User-Friendly Approach

While rivals including Google and Microsoft push into narrow and exotic areas such as game-playing and image analysis, Apple is reportedly taking a different tack. According to the Bloomberg writer Mark Gurman: ‘At its developer’s conference this month, Apple is expected to announce a different approach to artificial intelligence, one built on tools that consumers can use in their daily lives instead of exotic ones that require specialised skills.’ Natural-sounding AI features baked into everyday software.

Project Greymatter: Making Your Day-to-Day Life Smoother

Behind Project Greymatter (as Apple’s AI integration strategy is codenamed) will be things such as:

Smart Recap: Summarize emails, texts, notes, documents, and web pages for a quick catch-up.

Easier-to-Use Voice Memos: Auto-transcribe recordings, something new with iOS 17, but could get updated.

Supercharged Spotlight: Faster and more accurate searches on your device.

Intelligent Safari: Improved web search capabilities within the Safari browser.

AI-Powered Creativity and Communication

Custom Emoji on Demand: custom emoji that are generated in real time from the content of your text messages.

Suggested Replies: AI-generated response suggestions for emails and texts, saving you time and effort.

Remove objects from photos (via Google’s Magic Eraser): Clean Up will be a new feature from Google.

Privacy at the Forefront

Photos courtesy AppleAs for Apple’s position on user privacy, years before Facebook’s numerous privacy sins – not to mention potentially sinister AI – it had earned an early advantage by showing it would put customers first. So it should come as no surprise that Apple’s own AI will likely number the most demanding of features as intensive processing tasks done in the cloud, on purpose-built data centres. Those that are less demanding will probably be handled by local AI software running on the device itself. If the AI is trying to learn anything about you personally, we could even imagine some obvious opt-in features and onscreen alerts about the way your user information is used.

Siri 2.0: The AI Assistant Gets a Boost

We’ll hear rumours, too, that Siri herself is about to get a big boost, perhaps with a new generative AI under the hood that will turn her from an answerer of single questions to something closer to a full conversational partner, and will also improve the task-handling bits, such as booking appointments and maintaining to-do lists.

Stay Tuned for More

We’ll find out more when Apple’s WWDC keynote on 10 June formally unveils them and other features. But given Apple’s stated emphasis on bringing artificial intelligence closer to real people, get ready to enjoy smoother, more intelligent interactions in your daily life.

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