Apple introduces AI to its products at WWDC

Monday’s keynote saw two big AI reveals from Apple: The unveiling of Apple Intelligence — the name for Apple’s proprietary suite of AI capabilities — as well as a partnership with OpenAI that will integrate ChatGPT into many Apple devices. Where does one end, and the other begin?

The key distinction appears to fall in the line between what Apple described as “world knowledge” and “personal context.” Where Apple Intelligence will excel is combining information about you and your relationships and using those insights to streamline your everyday workflows — calling up old photos from an event or helping you create stylized AI-generated images of your contacts. Much of the processing of this data will happen within the Apple ecosystem, either on your Apple device or in special cloud-based Apple servers.

By comparison, Apple’s integration with OpenAI will let you send specific queries about the wider world to ChatGPT. Apple said that while Apple Intelligence will understand a great deal about your personal life, other AI models — such as ChatGPT — may be better suited for responding to prompts related to more general information.

Any prompts to ChatGPT will be sent to the platform on an opt-in basis — users will have to make a conscious decision to do so. You’ll also be able to use ChatGPT to create documents from within some Apple apps.

From the sound of it, the partnership will simply create an easier way for Apple users to access ChatGPT rather than providing unique or distinct AI features to Apple devices. Notably, you’ll be able to use ChatGPT through Apple without creating a ChatGPT account, and any prompts sent to ChatGPT won’t be logged and your data won’t be stored, Apple said. The company added that it’s working on integrating other AI startups’ models, too.

So the two announcements could be seen as rather complementary.