Apple isn’t typically the first to embrace new product categories — as it famously showed with its iPhone, smartwatch and Vision Pro. All those areas were established before the company showed up, but Apple found a way to make its mark.

Now it looks to do something similar with artificial intelligence, reports Mark Gurman. Nearly two years after the generative AI frenzy started, the company is preparing to lay out its vision for the technology. At its annual Worldwide Developers Conference Monday, Apple will announce plans to deeply integrate AI into its major apps and features — all while reiterating a commitment to privacy and security.

The company’s new AI system will be called Apple Intelligence, and it will come to new versions of the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems,

The AI features will account for about half of Apple’s WWDC keynote presentation, which starts at 10 a.m. Pacific time and typically runs for roughly two hours. Here are some of the things to expect during the keynote address:

AI Features

• Apple’s approach to AI will involve integrating the technology into as many of its apps as possible, in ways that ideally ease the daily lives of customers. The company is less focused on whiz-bang technology — like image and video generation — and instead concentrating on features with broad appeal.

• The new capabilities will be opt-in, meaning Apple won’t make users adopt them if they don’t want to. The company will also position them as a beta version. The processing requirements of AI will mean that users need an iPhone 15 Pro or one of the models coming out this year. If they’re using iPads or Macs, they’ll need models with an M1 chip at least.

• After years of discouraging the use of cloud servers for processing data — and even chastising rivals that did so — Apple risks sparking controversy by using the cloud for AI. So a large part of its announcement will focus on the precautions that the company is taking, including security features on the chips that it’s using in its data centers. Apple also won’t build user profiles based on customer data, and the company will generate reports to show that consumers’ information is secure and not being sold or read. At the same time, Apple will still tout the merits of on-device processing — when available.

• A major component of the AI push is summarization. Apple is planning features that can quickly recap articles and web pages in the Safari browser. They’ll also be able to sum up meetings notes, text messages and emails. And Apple is planning a catch-up feature for missed notifications, allowing users to quickly absorb what they missed when they weren’t looking at their phones.

• Siri will be a part of the new AI push as well, with Apple planning a revamp to its voice-control service based on large language models — a core technology behind generative AI. For the first time, Siri users will be able to have precise control over individual features and actions within apps. For instance, people will be able to tell Siri to delete an email, edit a photo or summarize a news article.

• The Mail app is getting a big upgrade as well. It will include a Gmail-like feature that automatically categorizes incoming messages.

• Voice Memos will get a much-needed AI infusion, with the company adding the ability to automatically transcribe recordings. That’s a feature that Google Pixel devices and many third-party voice recording apps have had for years.

• AI is coming to the Photos app as well, which will embed new capabilities into photo editing. That will make it easier to enhance an image or remove a person or object from the frame [like Google's Magic Eraser].

Other Likely Software Upgrades

• For decades, Apple’s industrial design team dictated the look and feel of all of the company’s products, ensuring that the software running on devices matched the clean lines and simplicity of the hardware. Now, customers are going to get a bit more say. In the latest iPhone operating system — iOS 18, codenamed Crystal — app icons will no longer have to remain in a neat grid. Instead, users will be able to place icons wherever they choose on their home screen. Moreover, icon colors will be customizable for the first time. That means users could make all their social media apps blue or finance-related icons green. All together, it’s considered to be the biggest upgrade to the home screen in the iPhone’s 17-year history.

• Control Center, another core part of the iPhone operating system, will get an updated interface that allows shortcut buttons to be rearranged within the Control Center view itself and placed across multiple pages. It will also have a new music widget and an updated interface for controlling smart home appliances.

• Apple is launching a Passwords app for iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS 15 that will offer an alternative to the 1Password and LastPass services. This will essentially be an app version of the company’s long-existing iCloud Keychain feature, which is currently hidden in the Settings app.

• The company has revamped the Calculator app and is bringing it to the iPad for the first time. On the iPad and Mac, the app will use the same overall interface — with round buttons — as the existing iPhone version.
• The company’s newest product, the Vision Pro, won’t get a major overhaul with visionOS 2 — codenamed Constellation — but the software will include features like new environments, the Passwords app and Vision Pro versions of iPad software. For more, read the full Bloomberg report.

John Giannandrea is Apple's senior vice president of artificial intelligence and machine learning. There’s enormous pressure on Apple to deliver an impressive slate of AI products and services. In interviews with CNBC, several people who know and have worked with Giannandrea over the years depict him as a humble and ahead-of-the-curve technologist, a quality that could be essential to Apple catching up in AI.

Wall Street sees this as a moment for Apple to prove it’s not behind on AI, serving as a catalyst for the stock through the second half of the year and spurring a hot upgrade cycle for the next iPhone model.

Until now, Giannandrea’s team has worked on AI features that run behind the scenes on Apple devices and software. That includes things like an accessibility feature that can digitally mimic someone’s voice if they lose the ability to speak themselves, or automatic edits that make your iPhone photos look better.

Apple, the company has been using AI for many years to power what you do on your Apple devices without you even knowing about it. That’s expected to evolve into more user-facing features this year, like improvements to the Siri digital assistant, a partnership with OpenAI that’ll add the ChatGPT-maker’s tech to the iPhone’s software and sophisticated voice controls for its apps. For more, read the full CNBC report.