Apple Intelligence available today in Australia

Six months after Apple announced their foray into the modern world of Artificial Intelligence with their own take called “Apple Intelligence” a new software update today enables the service for Australian users.

AI as we know it today to the average person is the powerful tool that allows us to generate text and information via services like ChatGPT or create images with just a prompt or a sketch.

However, Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Bob Borchers told EFTM that AI has been in Apple products for some time, “we’ve been using AI and machine learning for many, many years, and it’s across many of our products and some of the most important features, you know, the camera systems and iPhone use, computational photography, which is built on AI and ML (Machine Learning), some of our most lifesaving features like AFib and crash detection use AI and ML. So we’ve been using it and investing in it for many years and building on top of Apple silicon to make that happen. “

But, in a nod to the current trend of AI- he acknowledge the step forward that is today’s release of Apple Intelligence “with these generative models we’re really opening up a new era for AI to be put to use in really personal and powerful ways that I think are going to kind of turbocharge, supercharge the experience that you have with your, with your devices. So it really is the beginning of kind of a new chapter of how AI is gonna be able to power experiences that are helpful and important to you.”

Apple Intelligence will be available across the Apple product portfolio, working on Macs with Apple Silicon (M Processors), iPads with A17 or later, and iPhone 15 Pro models and all iPhone 16’s.

Many of the core features are not new in the world of tech, Samsung, Google, Oppo and Motorola have all launched AI services, Google and Samsung both have advanced image editing and creation on their devices – but for Apple users this is a whole new world.

However, in my own testing, I think the Apple Intelligence feature set is just slightly more integrated into the overall system, with writing tools available anywhere there is a cursor but the underlying technology actually powering a deeper knowledge of you and your information all available to Siri via on-device storage and processing.

Some processing may happen in the cloud, but this happens on Apple’s own private cloud compute with Apple’s laser focus attention to privacy enabled at every step.

Borchers says “AI and all of these technologies have to be grounded in a privacy promise that people can understand and that they can trust. And we believe in that for a long time. It’s a core principle of Apple. We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right, and so for us, it’s been really important with Apple intelligence to be transparent about how we’re delivering that privacy. And the foundation models, the diffusion models, the technology that we’ve built at Apple is built on that promise and that foundation of privacy. “

“So, for example, much of the work that will come from Apple Intelligence, much of the models will actually happen on device. So your data never leave your device, it is with you and you’re in complete control. And when you do actually need to go and access larger models, we’ve built this completely new architecture called Private Cloud compute, which essentially extends the privacy promise of the iPhone into the cloud.

Image Cleanup is a fun tool iPhone users will love, allowing you to remove subjects from the background of images (again, not a new idea, but very new to Apple), while Writing Tools is the one that many users can use to help elevate their written word to a different tone or just for a more advanced proofread.

For me, I encourage Apple iPhone users to go all-in on Apple Intelligence and notice how it improves your Notifications, summarising multiple messages from a single app, and prioritising notifications overall.

In particular also check the summaries of text messages and emails in your messages and mail apps – these shorter concise previews make taking action an easy decision without having to dig deep through all your messages.

And for those that use Apple Mail on the Mac, if you come to your inbox to an email thread with 20 new messages and just wanna know what everyone is on about – click Summarise – a game changer.

Apple has innovated in the use of cloud for AI here, and their deep integration into notifications and summaries is also innovative.

But the rest of their AI lineup is in line with the industry, however as always, when Apple does it – it’s real, we saw that with things like Wireless Charging, even 5G – a rising tide lifts all boats, and Apple just rose the tide in a big way.