Apple executives reveal the unique aspects of their AI technology compared to competitors.

• On Monday, Apple officially launched its new AI software suite, Apple Intelligence, with company executives detailing the features and rationale behind the technology.
• On Monday, Apple unveiled a restricted strategy that prioritizes immediate tasks over future-oriented speculation about the technology's capabilities.
• Apple software chief Craig Federighi stated that AI's purpose is not to replace people, but to enhance their abilities.

On Monday, company executives unveiled Apple Intelligence, the company's new AI software suite, which was fully embraced by the company.

The iPhone maker's WWDC launch event was designed to differentiate it from current AI leaders Microsoft and Google during a panel discussion on Monday afternoon.

Apple's software chief Craig Federighi and AI chief John Giannandrea revealed during a panel that the company has a unique approach to technology compared to its Silicon Valley competitors. Unlike other companies that are developing AI for a wide range of products, Apple is solely concentrating on the devices it sells and the personal data that an AI could utilize.

Apple unveiled a restricted strategy that prioritizes immediate tasks over future-oriented thinking about the technology's capabilities.

Federighi stated that AI's purpose is not to replace people but to enhance their abilities.

Apple's AI could be the first that its 2 billion users interact with, and if its AI features are preferred over cloud-based competition from Google or Microsoft, it could change the way billions of dollars in AI infrastructure are built and shift the direction of products that use the technology.

The development of AI has primarily focused on creating or acquiring increasingly powerful supercomputers with chips to develop even more energy-intensive AI models. In this context, users interact with the AI software by communicating with equally powerful servers via the internet.

Apple's AI is mostly on your device

Apple's AI strategy involves using multiple smaller models that can run on their devices and chips, with the option to access larger models in the cloud if needed. They have partnered with OpenAI to provide users with ChatGPT through Siri if necessary.

Apple Intelligence is the strategy employed by Apple executives, rather than using one or multiple models.

Giannandrea stated that the appropriate strategy for this situation is to utilize a variety of models with varying sizes to cater to distinct use cases.

Apple Intelligence has developed a 3-billion parameter model, while ChatGPT's GPT-3 model from 2020 has 175 billion parameters. The more parameters a model has, the more memory and computing power are required to run it.

Apple's AI approach is quicker than cloud-based options and offers privacy benefits, but can present challenges when models are too small to accomplish tasks. Apple is confident that its AI can utilize personal data from the iPhone, such as appointments, location, and user activity, to improve performance. Federighi gave an example of how his phone recognizes his daughter.

Apple is focusing on ensuring that its small models are designed for specific tasks they can excel at, rather than creating an open-ended chatbot interface.

"We're not telling this teenager to go fly an airplane," Federighi emphasized, highlighting a crucial step that is being overlooked.

Apple unveiled several AI features on Monday that are similar to products already announced this year. Apple's AI technology can summarize and rewrite documents, generate small images, and translate conversations in real-time. One unique feature will allow users to create new emojis using AI without an internet connection. These new features will be available in a beta version this fall.

Apple's approach to privacy

As Apple integrates AI into its products, maintaining user privacy will become more difficult. For years, the company has emphasized privacy as a key selling point, distinguishing itself from data brokers and spammers by stating that its business model doesn't rely on targeted advertising and that it puts its users' best interests first.

Apple's privacy policies do not allow other AI companies to collect and store user data to improve their software, as Apple takes great care to protect user privacy. Apple's presentation on Monday emphasized the steps they have taken to prevent the perception that they are collecting user data to improve their AI.

"Giannandrea stated that they won't send the data to a cloud service because they want to keep it private, whether it's running locally or on a cloud computing service, in order to protect the most personal data."

Apple did not specify the data used to train its AI models, except that it utilizes publicly available files, along with licensed data such as news archives and stock photography.

Apple has announced that it has developed its own servers using its Apple chips, called Apple Private Cloud, to ensure that user data sent back to an AI server is not stored or reused. This move is significant as it allows third parties to inspect the software, which is unusual for a company that typically keeps its infrastructure details private.

Apple will allow inspection of its AI server software because even if a company claims not to use the data, there is no way to verify it, as Federighi explained.

More AI to come

Apple officials have downplayed the significance of the company's AI strategy shift, stating that it is merely an extension of the machine learning work already done, such as photo editing, text transcription, and AI-specific chip blocks.

"Federighi stated that others are only recently claiming a new category exists, but we've been shipping those things for a long time."

Apple will integrate OpenAI's ChatGPT into its operating systems, providing users with a more powerful and larger AI model. However, users will be informed that their data will be sent to OpenAI servers, which run on Microsoft's cloud, and that answers will be clearly marked as coming from ChatGPT.

Apple may provide various models in the future, indicating that Apple Intelligence is not the only AI system it anticipates its customers will utilize. Federighi stated that some customers might desire a medical AI system or legal AI model integrated into Apple products in the future. Alternatively, they might prefer one of Google's models.

"In the future, we will look forward to integrating with models like Google Gemini, as our direction is to do so, according to Federighi. However, there is nothing to announce at this time."