Just Now! Apple Released Apple Intelligence, Officially Announced Free Access to ChatGPT, and Siri Ushered in a Major Update
After the big model race started, Apple seemed to have left the first echelon. The former industry leader did not promote AI as frequently as other big companies. In addition, it lacked "star products" that could compete, so it was once labeled as "backward". But in fact, netizens who are familiar with Apple know that this is a "land-focused" company that is better at engineering innovative technologies and achieving "engineering innovation." Because of this,While generative AI is developing in full swing, many netizens are still looking forward to Apple's "epoch-making" products.
Now, Apple has finally taken action.In the WWDC24 keynote that just ended, Apple released the generative AI model Apple Intelligence, and introduced major updates such as iOS 18 and Siri based on Apple Intelligence.
at the same time,The previously rumored collaboration between Apple and OpenAI was also officially announced.Later this year, ChatGPT will be available on iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, powered by GPT-4o, and will be free to access without creating an account. ChatGPT subscribers can connect their accounts to access paid features.
In addition to introducing the major updates of Apple Intelligence, Siri, and iOS 18, this article also sorts out the development history of Siri, hoping to further demonstrate the importance of the upgrade of Apple's AI capabilities to Siri.
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Apple Intelligence is finally here
Much anticipated,Apple Intelligence is finally here.
Apple calls it "personal intelligence," which, combined with generative AI, can provide users with more personalized intelligence. Craig Federighi, the company's senior vice president, said, "Apple intelligence is based on the user's personal data and background."
Cook said,Apple Intelligence will change what users can do with Apple products, and what Apple products can do for users.At the same time, he also emphasized the importance of privacy and personalization, and proposed that "personal intelligence is an important initiative for Apple in the next stage."
In addition, with private cloud computing, Apple Intelligence can flexibly expand its computing power and utilize large server-based models to handle more complex requests. These models run on servers powered by Apple chips, further ensuring that user-uploaded data is not retained or exposed.
Specifically, Apple Intelligence enables:
* Mail handling:Based on the "priority information" feature, a new area at the top of the inbox will display the most urgent emails. Each email comes with a summary, so you can check the content without opening the email. Smart replies can identify questions in emails and ensure that all questions are answered.
* Image Playground:Quickly create fun pictures for friends and even see personalized suggestions from users relevant to their conversations.
* Genmoji:Users can freely customize Genmoji emoticons through text descriptions.
* Writing improvements: Apple Intelligence will introduce system-wide proofreading and style improvements for native and third-party apps.
* Cross-application tasks:Apple Intelligence can penetrate deep into a user's applications to perform tasks on the user's behalf.
* …
Siri's past and present: Losing its leading edge, can it be reborn with the help of OpenAI?
To some extent, Siri was Steve Jobs's winning shot in human-computer interaction, which gave Apple a head start, but the subsequent development was not as expected. Now, with the support of Apple Intelligence and GPT-4o, can Siri be reborn?
Acquiring Siri was the last thing Steve Jobs did before his death
Siri was originally a research project of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under the U.S. Department of Defense, positioned as a national-level virtual voice assistant. In 2007, the introduction of external funds led to the birth of Siri, whose founders include Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (senior vice president of engineering) and Tom Gruber (CTO and senior vice president of design).
Siri debuted as an independent app in 2010. The Siri team reportedly believes that Siri's core competitive advantage is that its service is a radical break from the traditional method of searching for information on the Internet. Siri is not a search engine, but an intelligent agent that appears in the form of a virtual assistant and is capable of social interaction.
Siri's innovation quickly caught the attention of Steve Jobs, who, despite being seriously ill, personally called the three Siri giants and invited them to his home to discuss the development of human-computer interaction and expressed his willingness to acquire the company. According to Norman Winarsky's recollection in his speech, Steve Jobs talked with Siri's management team and board of directors 20 to 30 times within two weeks. Finally, in April 2010, Apple acquired Siri for $150-250 million.
In October 2011, Siri was launched together with iPhone 4s as an intelligent voice assistant. With deep integration, Siri can call on Apple's built-in tools to handle simple tasks such as scheduling meetings, replying to emails, and checking the weather.There is no doubt that Siri has quickly attracted a warm response due to its unprecedented positioning.
Unfortunately, Jobs died suddenly the day after the iPhone 4s was released. John Markoff, a senior technology reporter for The New York Times and known as the "Silicon Valley Exclusive King," said,The acquisition of Siri was the last thing Steve Jobs did before his death. It brought about the first earth-shaking change within Apple. He paved the way for Apple to move into the future - to welcome another important transformation in human-computer interaction in the future.
Unexpectedly,The death of Jobs became an important turning point for Siri to become lost in the crowd.A former Apple employee once said, "When Steve died the day after Siri was released, they (the Siri team) had already lost their vision and blueprint. His death basically marked the end of the original Siri team's plan."
Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus, two of the three founders of Siri, left Apple in 2012 and took with them some engineers from the startup team. They then co-founded a new smart voice company, Viv Labs, which was eventually acquired by Samsung. Adam Cheyer once said,"After Steve Jobs died, things changed at Apple. If Steve Jobs was still here, I probably wouldn't have left."
During this period, Apple poached Bill Stasior, an executive from Amazon’s search and advertising business, who was mainly responsible for the management of multiple Siri core teams, including speech recognition, natural semantic understanding, and search. According to a former Apple employee who revealed to the media,Bill Stasior prefers to make Siri a world-class search engine.He combined Apple's search resources with Siri to further enhance Siri's performance, including search capabilities in web pages, media resources, and Wikipedia.
This development direction is obviously very different from the team's original positioning of Siri as "capable of social interaction". During Bill Stasior's tenure as the helm, many senior employees left.Faced with internal and external troubles, while Apple was suffering from talent loss, Samsung, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google had already taken advantage of the situation and entered the smart voice assistant market.
Samsung launched S Voice on the Galaxy S3 in 2012; Google Now became available within the Google Search mobile app for iOS in 2013; Microsoft announced Cortana on Windows Phone in 2014; Amazon also launched Alexa on the Echo smart speaker in 2014; and Google launched the Google Assistant in 2016.
At the same time, Siri's updates lacked novelty, and problems such as mishearing commands in noisy environments became increasingly prominent. Today, Siri has even gradually become a "useless" function of the iPhone. The reason for this, I think, is that Apple's early positioning of Siri was unclear - whether to become a "world-class search engine" or an "intelligent assistant" that can handle complex command tasks, which also led to a serious stagnation in its development.
Nowadays, generative AI is very popular, and ChatBot represented by ChatGPT has shown great potential.Apple not only released Apple Intelligence, but also announced a partnership with OpenAI.Can this two-pronged approach inject some fresh blood into Siri?
Siri with ChatGPT
Judging from the recent release, the answer is yes.
first,Siri becomes more natural, contextual, and personal to simplify and speed up everyday tasks.If the user stumbles, Siri can keep up and maintain context from one request to the next. In addition, users can also type text to Siri and switch between text and voice to communicate with Siri in any way that suits them. Siri also adopts a new design, and when Siri is active, the edge of the screen will be surrounded by elegant glowing lights.
Secondly,Based on the screen perception function,Siri will be able to understand and act on user actions in more apps. For example, if a friend sends a text message with a new address in Messages, the recipient can say, "Add this address to his contact card."
third,Siri can also take hundreds of new actions in Apple and third-party apps.For example, users can ask, "Pull up that article about cicadas from my reading list," or "Send Maria the pictures of Saturday's barbecue," and Siri will do it for you.
also,Siri can provide device support for users anytime and anywhere.Answers to thousands of how-to questions on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
More importantly,Siri will be connected to ChatGPT for free.When Siri cannot answer a user's question, they can "seek help" from ChatGPT's expertise. Siri will ask the user "Do you want to share this question with ChatGPT?" The user can send it text, files or pictures, and Siri will then give the answer directly.
According to Greg Brockman, ChatGPT will be integrated into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS and will be available later this year. Let us wait and see.
iOS 18 with AI buffs
Although it has not yet caught up with the "express train" of GPT, Apple Intelligence has also injected strong momentum into the update of the iOS system.
Home screen personalization control
Apple has given users control over the home screen, which means that iPhone users can finally modify the home screen according to their preferences, such as choosing their favorite photos as wallpapers, or changing the position of applications at will and placing them at the bottom right for easier access.
In addition, the application icon not only supports dark mode, but also can choose other colors to match the user's wallpaper to achieve personalized home screen settings.
Upgrade Control Center
The new control center adopts a multi-page layout and adds a new "Control Center Component Library". Third-party developers can also connect their own applications to the control center of iOS 18, so that users can access the things they need to do every day at a faster speed.
Enhanced privacy protection
Sometimes users lend their devices to others for short-term use. In order to avoid information leakage, Apple has adopted the lock application function. Once a user locks an application, others who want to use it must first authenticate through Face ID, Touch ID or password. In addition, users can also hide the applications they use and put them in a locked hidden application folder to prevent others from "sneaking".
Messages Reply
The new Tapback feature supports replying with any emoji or sticker, which makes it easier and more fun for users to express themselves! At the same time, the message app has added a timed message function, and supports adding bold, italic, underline or strikethrough text formatting options to make the text more rich.
Easy mobile payment
Apple also introduced a fast and private way to pay with “tap to pay,” making it easy to pay that dinner bill just by holding your phones close together without sharing your phone number or email address.
Automatic photo classification
The photo album will be automatically categorized according to shooting date, location, people, pets, etc. Users can freely arrange the order of photos to facilitate users to find the photos they want.
Final Thoughts
Jobs' excellent market foresight and product innovation laid a strong foundation for Apple. Many people believe that Cook has weakened Apple's innovative genes after taking power, which is also an important reason why the company lags behind in the new round of AI wave. Judging from the number of times Cook mentioned AI tonight, Apple has officially sounded the clarion call for attack. With a strong hardware ecosystem and user base, it may be able to achieve unexpected success by making careful plans before taking action.
References:
1.https://www.jiqizhixin.com/articles/2018-07-28-4
2.https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/kSEIGhdpGM-X652puCZuhg