Almost two years after the launch of ChatGPT, that revolutionized the technology industry In November 2022, Apple debuts its generative artificial intelligence (AI) system. Hand in hand with the software updates for your devices – iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1, scheduled for this Monday – new smart functions now arrive. EL PAÍS has had access to them before the premiere and has tested them thoroughly: they stand out for their comfort and ease of use, but they do not rival the spectacular capabilities that the competition has been launching during the current race to promote all types of technological tools with AI.
When last June Apple Intelligence was the undisputed protagonist at the annual WWDC software developer conference, the Californian tech giant announced it as a new form of “personal intelligence,” rather than artificial. He highlighted the ability to understand personal context and combine it with generative AI models to provide intelligent functions adapted to the experiences of each user, which Apple promotes together with sophisticated skills to create unique images and emojis, just by describing them.
None of those star features are available at the launch of the new artificial intelligence service: it takes off with a very small first package of new featureswhich carry the test label beta and that are far from making Apple devices the smartest in their class. Most of those functions that They now arrive on the latest iPhone —only the 15 Pro, 16 and 16 Pro— have already been available for a long time in the smartphones recent from google o Samsung and in Microsoft apps.
For now, only those using their iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers in US English will have access to Apple Intelligence. This new AI will open up in the coming months to additional variants of English, but it will not reach other languages until 2025. And, although it can be used in many countries outside the United States, on phones and tablets the system will be blocked in the European Union (EU) until it adapts to the corresponding community regulations, the so-called Digital Markets Act (DMA). So, unless you use a US account, the only way to try these new features in the EU starting this Monday will be by having an Apple computer with an M1 processor or higher and updating your operating system to macOS 15.1 as soon as it is available.
Therefore, the tests carried out by this newspaper have focused on the possibility of testing Apple Intelligence on computers. After performing that update, change the language of your Mac—and Siri—to US English, The option to request activation appears in Settings > Siri from Apple Intelligence: then you get on a waiting list and in just a few minutes—at least, during the EL PAÍS tests—the smart news can be used. The highlight of this first wave, waiting for the most spectacular features to arrive with new updates, are the writing tools, which allow you to correct, rewrite and summarize texts. They are available for now in Apple’s own apps such as Notes, Messages, Mail, Safari and also in other text editors such as Microsoft Word. To use these functions, simply select the text and choose the ‘Writing Tools’ option from the ‘Edit’ menu, which is also accessible in the quick menu that appears when making a secondary click about the text.
The first option you see is used to review and correct texts – in English, Proofreading—. In the tests carried out, it suggests appropriate precision for journalistic texts published in English by native speakers. Of course, it is still a new interface for checking spelling, punctuation and grammar that computers have had for decades. The new intelligence begins to become more evident and useful with the next option, to rewrite: it serves both to refine the writing, making it clearer and more direct, and to write a text in natural language from a few telegraphic phrases.
Writing with the help of AI
Unlike other competing systems, for this rewriting the initial version of Apple Intelligence only allows you to choose three additional tones – friendly, professional and concise – instead of being able to specify the tone with specific indications about what you want the text for. And at the moment, these AI-assisted writing tools also do not allow you to compose a text from scratch based on some instructions. Those two possibilities will come with the next package of news smart devices —in December, with the updates to iOS 18.2 and macOS 15.2—, which will integrate ChatGPT for the most sophisticated requests.
For now, a third function of the writing tools allows you to summarize text, both to shorten a piece of writing and to help with its reading and understanding. To summarize, there are three options: summarize in a paragraph, in a point diagram or in a table. In the days before the release of Apple Intelligence, the quality of these summaries varied between the different texts chosen for testing; and, as with other generative AI systems, in some cases hallucinations appear which can lead to striking misunderstandings.
The system, which has been in the testing phase for a few months, allows you to evaluate the results and send comments to Apple. The general impression is that these writing tools are a very practical aid to perfect writing in a language – for now, only in US English – whether you are a native speaker or have a more limited ability to express yourself. Also, Apple’s clear and simple way of implementing them promises to bring generative AI to many users who are still on the sidelines of the technological revolution started with ChatGPT.
Other functions that arrive with the premiere of Apple Intelligence are intelligent responses in Messages and Mail, or automatic summaries of emails, messages, notifications, voice notes or calls. In the case of Safari, these summaries are especially practical and accurate, which are offered when consulting web pages – only in English, for now – by activating reading mode. And in the Photos app, you can automatically delete objects or people or search for images by typing what you want to find. Again, in all these cases, nothing goes beyond what multiple apps and chatbots from other companies that use generative AI were already offering.
Renew Siri without losing privacy
The apple company has admitted, in a recent interview by its vice president of software Craig Federighithat the premiere of Apple Intelligence is only a first step and that it will continue to expand the system little by little. The priorities, according to Federighi, are more privacy and caution to implement this technology correctly and responsibly for years, than to catch up with its competitors in the AI race as soon as possible. The new features that the new system brings to the Siri voice assistant are another example of this multi-phase strategy.
For now, in this initial phase Siri has a new lookalso responds to typed instructions—not just spoken requests—it is capable of maintaining the thread in a chain of different questions and of understanding the user if they get stuck speaking or change what they say in the middle of their question. Additionally, the voice assistant can answer questions about Apple products; It is something that is practical to discover how to change computer settings, for example. However, the new, truly more intelligent Siri, which users have been demanding for years, will not arrive until spring 2025. In addition to answering complex questions using ChatGPT, it will then be—with updates to iOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4—when Siri will be able to understand personal questions that Apple already promotes in its adslike: “What time does my mother’s flight arrive?” or “What is the name of the person I had a meeting with at the Museum of Contemporary Art last month?”
To process these personal questions, Apple’s AI must use the confidential information handled by the apps on your computers, tablets and phones. The company maintains that, to protect privacy, processing will be carried out whenever possible within the device itself: in these cases, neither personal data – nor texts that can now be corrected, rewritten or summarized – will travel to servers. like those used by OpenAI to process questions to ChatGPT. Only for the most complex tasks, the information will be sent to the cloud. Apple has promised that, to do this, the information will travel encrypted to its new Private Computing Cloud and will never be stored there. Last week, the technology giant announced that has opened that system so that independent researchers can verify its security and that will financially reward those who find vulnerabilities.
With the premiere of Apple Intelligence, its large-scale use will begin, with millions of users, which will really put to the test in the coming months both the reliability of Apple’s first generative AI tools and the privacy of these processes. Still, the restricted scope of this system—for now, it will only work in US English; and it will never do so on phones prior to the iPhone 15 Pro— gives the technology multinational room to make improvements before opening the system in 2025 to new languages such as Spanish, Chinese, French or Japanese. In the absence of announcing a specific date for this internationalization, the company has not communicated when it will make its system compatible with the European directive. Until that happens, EU users’ iPhones and iPads will continue to have limited access to the new artificial intelligence system.
