Apples WWDC24 is just around the corner and Cupertino is widely expected to introduce its AI-powered iOS 18, touted as “one of the biggest overhauls in iOS history”.
The latest report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman details the new AI features expected to launch with iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS 15. These include AI-powered Safari, Photos and Notes, as well as improved Siri and notifications with smart summaries. Apple is said to offer AI photo retouching, a revamped Safari web search, and an improved Spotlight search with faster and more reliable results.
Siri gets a major overhaul with more natural-sounding voice interactions, based on Apple's internal LLM. Messages and emails get automatically generated replies based on conversations. Smart summaries provide summaries of missed notifications and messages, as well as web pages, notes and documents.
Users also get the option to transcribe voice recordings directly. Apple is also working on automatically generated custom emojis, which will stand apart from the existing set of emojis and appear as suggestions as you type.
Apple's new set of AI features is known internally as “Project Greymatter” and Gurman specifies that less intensive AI tasks will be run on the devices, while more demanding tasks will be sent to the cloud. Gurman also indicates that iPhone, iPad and Mac chips released in the past year can use the new AI features.
We're also getting more confirmation of the redesigned home screen that will allow users to place app icons anywhere on the screen and also change their background color.