Apple announced its new artificial intelligence service and revamped look for its Siri voice assistant in June, with plans to begin testing later this year. But some features likely won’t appear until next year, according to a new report.
The company’s coming Apple Intelligence service promises many new features when it begins testing later this year, including a revamped look, more intuitive voice controls and integration with OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT. New reporting from Bloomberg on Sunday gives more detail on the launch timing, saying Apple plans to offer Siri’s new look and ChatGPT integrations later this year. Siri’s new abilities to control apps with your voice and to understand what you’re looking at on the screen, meanwhile, won’t arrive until next year.
“Neither of those upgrades will be ready when Apple Intelligence launches this fall,” Bloomberg wrote.
Representatives for Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Apple is taking a more conservative approach to launching AI services than other tech giants. Companies including Microsoft, Google owner Alphabet, Facebook owner Meta and OpenAI have rushed to launch new features, stirring consumer interest. Unfortunately, some new products have launched with decidedly mixed results.
Google perhaps has drawn the most attention for adding what it calls AI Overviews summaries to its search results. The new feature, released in May, almost immediately started spreading racist conspiracy theories and dangerous health advice, such as recommending people eat rocks or add glue to pizza to keep the cheese on. After user posts of Google’s embarrassing results went viral, the company said it would slow the feature’s launch, though some publications still found it spreading misinformation afterward.
Apple executives said their approach is informed by efforts to ensure transparency about content that’s created or edited by AI, among other things. Apple has also said it wants to ensure user privacy, seen as a direct criticism of peers that have warned users that data their AI touches may be used to train the technology.
Whether Apple’s approach will win over consumers, or potentially change the tech industry’s approach to AI, is uncertain. But it underscores some of the key questions about the impact of artificial intelligence.
Read more: How Close Is That Photo to the Truth? What to Know in the Age of AI
For instance, researchers across Google last month released a 29-page report warning that people using AI to flood the internet with “low quality, spam-like and nefarious synthetic content” may foment distrust of all digital information. The result, effectively, would be that AI “slop” would tear away at our shared understanding of reality.
Apple is hoping to sidestep many of these issues through AI features with a narrower focus, such as how to identify plans being made in an email, or automatically summarizing a long text message chain between friends. The company’s executives have marketed Apple Intelligence as helping “make your most personal products even more useful and delightful.”
So far, investors have cheered the company’s approach, pushing Apple’s shares to more than $3.4 trillion, their highest value ever.
The Bloomberg report also included updates on Apple’s smartwatch plans.
