More details have emerged about Apple's plans for artificial intelligence features with iOS 18. A new AppleInsider report claims the update will let the iPhone and iPad summarize long text messages using AI, similar to Humane AI Pin's “Catch me up” command.
This is one of the improvements and upgrades suggested for iOS 18, which includes generative AI, a super-powered Siri, improved accessibility and more. Citing sources familiar with Apple's upcoming software update, AppleInsider reports that Apple's generative AI may give you the TLDR version for long text messages. To do this, Apple's on-device AI will reportedly scan a text and designate specific keywords and phrases within it as text topics. “For example, if a name appears above a piece of text, the software will likely recognize that name as the author of the text,” the outlet explained.
Then, the software detects “all available relevant information” such as companies, people and places to write an initial text summary, which Apple's on-device response generation software then uses to create a more coherent response. The feature will apparently be able to summarize information from both Safari and Messages, though it could potentially work with any text fields or digital documents as well.
We got another peek at Apple's AI plans with the iOS 17.4 beta in January, which included references to a private framework called “SiriSummarization” that calls the ChatGPT API. Last summer, Bloomberg revealed that Apple had begun testing its own AI chatbot that staff are internally calling “Apple GPT.” The company also started creating its own framework called “Ajax” for building large language models (LLMs).
These AI features, including a summarization tool, will reportedly use on-device processing and a larger language model running locally rather than running in the cloud like its competitors. Not only does this translate to faster response and more privacy, as no data is being sent to third-party servers, but it also has the added benefit of being able to work completely offline.
“Because the company's text analysis software is capable of working entirely on-device, it could give Apple an advantage over the competition in the area of privacy protection,” reports AppleInsider.
We still have several weeks before we can get our hands on iOS 18 and try out Apple's AI features for ourselves, assuming Apple unveils this year's iPhone software update at WWDC 2024 on June 10. will Being one of the most important iPhone updates in a long time.