Report: Apple is Bringing AI to Safari, Photos, Notifications, and More

Apple’s WWDC developer conference, which will kick off on June 10, is expected to kickstart the company’s huge effort to catch up to its competitors in the generative AI race. In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple will officially announce a new partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI during the event, which will also focus on new AI features coming to iOS 18 and macOS 15 later this year.

According to Gurman, Apple’s current generative AI strategy is centered around adding intelligent features to its most-used apps. However, the company reportedly isn’t planning to launch its own ChatGPT-like chatbot later this year, even though Apple has already started working on one.

Apple often uses the ‘Privacy by design’ card to differentiate itself from its competitors, and the company’s new AI features should be no different. Gurman explained that iOS 18 and macOS 15 will intelligently determine whether an AI feature should run locally (on devices with recent Apple chips) or tap into cloud resources. Apple may also emphasize that unlike its competitors, it’s not using user data to build customer profiles. Moreover, Gurman believes that Apple is still pursuing a partnership with Google to use the company’s Gemini AI as an alternative to OpenAI’s models.

“Apple is preparing to spend a good portion of its Worldwide Developers Conference laying out its AI-related features,” Gurman wrote. “At the heart of the new strategy is Project Greymatter — a set of AI tools that the company will integrate into core apps like Safari, Photos and Notes.”

Here are the main AI features Apple is planning to reveal at WWDC according to Gurman:

Siri upgrades: The digital assistant will be able to interact with users in a more natural way thanks to new large language models developed by Apple. An upgraded Siri will also be available on the Apple Watch to help users accomplish the most common tasks.

Photo editing: Apple’s Photos app will help users to intelligently edit pictures. Here, Apple will just be playing catch up with the free AI-powered tools in Google Photos.

Smart recaps: This feature will be able to summarize missed notifications, text messages, web pages, documents, and more.

Write message and emails: iOS and macOS will be able to suggest what to reply to emails and text messages, just like ChatGPT and other AI chatbots can already do.

Custom emojis: Apple’s AI technology will be capable of creating brand new emojis based on the content of messages users wrote.

Voice memo transcription: This is quite self-explanatory, but this feature will use AI to transcribe voice memos in other languages

While this isn’t related to AI, iOS 18 will also bring major improvements to the Home screen. Gurman previously said that users will be able to rearrange app icons freely, but he’s now reporting that Apple will also let them change the color of app icons… which is something some app developers currently charge a premium for. “For instance, you can make all your social icons blue or finance-related ones green — and they won’t need to be placed in the standard grid that has existed since day one in 2007,” Gurman wrote.

Overall, iOS 18 and macOS 15 promise to be very important updates considering Apple’s massive userbase. “There will be hundreds of millions of Apple devices around the world that can support the AI features when they debut later this year,” Gurman said. This could immediately turn Apple into a leader in the generative AI field, even though the company doesn’t have the in-house technology to compete with OpenAI and other AI companies yet.