Apple Intelligence: AI and software heads share insights on the Siri relaunch.

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After the keynote at Apple's WWDC developer conference, there were many questions about Apple Intelligence, the iPhone manufacturer's AI offensive. An event in the Steve Jobs Theater, which invited media representatives, including heise online, were able to attend, was supposed to provide answers. At first glance, the event was somewhat reminiscent of the legendary Q&A session that Steve Jobs hosted in 2007 after a new Mac launch. Back then, Jobs, his head of marketing Phil Schiller and the then COO Tim Cook fielded questions for 15 minutes.

Now, on this Monday, software boss Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea, head of machine learning and Apple's AI strategy, sat at the front. Schiller, an Apple Fellow for several years and most recently known as the man for difficult cases, such as the laws in the EU, sat in the front row and watched. However, this meeting had much less in common with the uncomfortable Q&A session from back then than expected.

Influencer moderated the panel

Apple had hired an external moderator, Justine Ezarik, better known as YouTuber iJustine, to interview Federighi and Giannandrea. Apple CEO Tim Cook hilariously moderated the round. Ezarik, who is known for euphorically unpacking new Apple products in all colors and variations, did not ask any uncomfortable questions. It also remained unclear what the exact conditions for her moderation were, i.e. whether she was paid by Apple, how much knowledge she had to prepare in advance and whether Apple dictated the questions.

However, the audience did gain at least a little more clarity and insight into Apple Intelligence. In contrast to the keynote, it became clear that Apple uses its own language models for a large part of its AI - meaning that the collaboration with OpenAI is much less important than initially assumed. OpenAI boss Sam Altman was also spotted in the audience at the WWDC keynote - but he was not expected to play a role here. It also became clear that ChatGPT is used when users want more - for example, for the text creation function. Federighi revealed that Apple would then conveniently pave the way for them with the new integration instead of releasing them into a third-party app - and the system also warns that this AI can sometimes hallucinate.

No teenager in the airplane cockpit

Apple itself apparently does not fear this with its own generative models. They were trained with data from the public web, but also with licensed content from books and stock photos, said Giannandrea. The models had been trained and tested very thoroughly, he affirmed, and the functions had been carefully planned so that known weaknesses of AI did not even come into play.

Federighi put it in a nutshell when he said: "We don't take the teenager and tell him: Here, fly the big plane". Apple's software boss also explained the security precautions for private cloud computing. Even if a company promises that it won't do anything with the data, nobody can verify this, he says. Apple therefore keeps the data at bay by anonymizing requests and sending them to the servers with masked IP addresses. The server has no permanent memory and does not log requests. Apple is also open to regular audits by security researchers.

Closing ranks at the executive level

The security aspect, but also the energy efficiency, had prompted Apple to use its own Apple Silicon processors for the servers. "One of the biggest cost factors is energy," emphasized Federighi. Apple wants to reduce its impact on the environment and only uses electricity from 100 percent renewable energy.

Giannandrea and Federighi also demonstrated their solidarity with their joint appearance. Shortly before the event, a media report claimed that the collaboration between the two had initially been tense in terms of AI. Now they both emphasized that Apple Intelligence is only at the beginning, that this is a first step towards establishing personal intelligence in the style of Apple. And Siri is no longer a voice assistant, but a device assistant that is developing a deeper understanding of what is happening on the device, said Giannandrea.

More than a tactical move

Apple Intelligence is not a tactical move, but Apple is really building it into the operating system, emphasized Giannandrea, who previously developed AI at Google. Using the example of AI-generated emojis, Federighi pointed out that this would allow individual user needs to be met that could never have been implemented in the past. "This is the beginning of a long, exciting journey."

(mki)