On Apple Intelligence

Apple recently announced their take on artificial intelligence and how it is best applied through the announcement of "Apple Intelligence".

Their implementation of AI is very different compared to other phone manufacturers as it is done in a way which is totally seamless and even works offline (purely on device!) for a lot of common use cases.

It's clear they've put a lot of thought into the essence of AI and how it should be best implemented. Like the three categories mentioned in my post The Current State of AI Wearables, Apple has managed to make the perfect solution to the productivity aspect in the form of an app (or in this case - they've made the entire iPhone a bit of a productivity based AI wearable.).

They understand privacy and how your mobile phone, your device with the most personal information (photos, texts—most of what is on your phone is probably what you'd like to keep to yourself) should not have AI integrated to the extent which any of those information are at risk of being leaked to others.

On the other hand, an AI agent having access to all those information is when it becomes most useful—it can understand your preferences, your habits, and know exactly when to do exactly what. Keeping the balance of privacy while also maximizing the utility of such a powerful technology is what Apple has done what I'd consider as perfectly at this year's WWDC.

Trying to implement the best AI agent they can, they also implemented the most exhaustive security measures—what they call "Private Cloud Compute"—which protect the user data, ensure everything is private, and builds on their reputation of being one of the most trusted companies.

Integrating ChatGPT among other large language models is also done very well, requiring consent from the user and also making it an option to use a different model (or if they decide to, not use a model at all). Having it all being opt-in and user customizable is the right move, especially among all the chaos with Microsoft's Recall having no "opt-out" option on setup.

The announcement makes me even more excited on what other manufacturers prepare to do next as Apple shares their unique and well-thought-out take on Artificial Intelligence. Their work on AI safety and privacy is also exciting as it sets a new industry standard for all AI-related applications in the mobile space.