AI features on iOS 18 are about to be upgraded

According to several research papers that Apple has published in recent months, the company is investing heavily in various types of artificial intelligence technologies. At the WWDC event in June, Apple may announce its AI strategy, with a main focus on feature support on iOS 18 and other new operating system versions.

In the latest Power On newsletter, author Mark Gurman said the new AI features on the iPhone will be fully supported by large language models (LLM) and can be used offline. Of course, Apple will heavily advertise the benefits such as privacy and speed of this new technology.

The disadvantage of LLM on devices is that they cannot be as powerful as models running on giant server centers, with tens of billions of parameters and constantly updated with new data.

But Apple engineers can take advantage of the platform's full integration capabilities, combined with tailored software and powerful silicon chips to make the most of the processing power.

Mobile models are often much faster to respond than sending requests through a cloud service, and they also have the advantage of being able to work offline in places without an Internet connection.

Although mobile LLMs may not possess rich databases, they can be adapted to be capable of performing multiple tasks. For example, on-device AI can create complex automatic responses for messaging apps or improve Siri's ability to interpret many requests.

In addition, using the LLM model is also consistent with Apple's strict requirements on privacy.

On-device models can also perform many general AI tasks such as creating documents or images. Apple has the flexibility to partner with some companies like Google to own backup AI engines on servers for certain tasks.

Besides AI for iOS, Apple also revealed new software features for the operating systems of a variety of other devices at WWDC 2024, including, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Apple Vision.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 22 April 2024