A recent report details some of the AI features coming to iPhones with iOS 18, and it appears as if there are quite a few things users can to look forward to. However, it appears that nothing Apple will be offering its users is necessarily groundbreaking, it’s simply the company trying to keep up as the rest of the industry dives headfirst into AI everything.
The author of the report, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, says that this new effort by Apple is known internally as “Project Greymatter.” Apple is looking to tightly integrate AI into iOS’s most important apps and will also use it to improve notifications. The goal is to enhance these apps in a way that’s so natural that users won’t even notice the AI.
One of the features getting an AI uplift that might seem inconsequential, but is important to a large part of the iPhone’s younger user base, is emojis. According to Gurman users will be able to take advantage of generative AI to “create custom emojis on the fly, based on what users are texting.” This will add to an already large selection of emojis available in iOS.
Apparently, Apple is also concerned about privacy with these upcoming updates. The report claims that most of the processing will take place on a user’s device, however, a new wrinkle is that any AI work that needs more processing will be sent to datacenters powered by M2 chips. Apple will need to do a lot of work convincing people that their privacy can be respected when the data leaves their device.
A wildcard in all of this is Apple’s supposed partner in these AI efforts, OpenAI. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, has come under scrutinty recently, which may paint OpenAI in a negative light, if the company is truly the only supplier of AI-enahnced features for iOS.
Apple’s WWDC in June will certainly be interesting, as the company will most likely unveil all of these new AI features at the event.