In the next few hours, millions of iPhone owners will be treated to their first glimpse of the next major operating system upgrade coming from Apple. The US technology firm is poised to kickstart its Worldwide Developer Conference, known as WWDC, from its headquarters in Cupertino, California tomorrow night.
The annual event is an opportunity for Apple to preview some of the biggest changes coming to its operating systems, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS to the developers behind some of the most popular apps on its platforms. Following major Artificial Intelligence (AI) announcements from rivals Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI in recent weeks, Apple is tipped to unveil never-before-seen new tricks on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Yes, like its closest competitors, whispers from inside the secretive company suggest Artificial Intelligence will play a major role in the incoming software updates, which include iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. According to sources speaking to Bloomberg, Apple will leverage AI to summarise lengthy emails and text messages into bullet points. Online webpages will also be summarised in the Safari web browser.
AI will purportedly suggest replies to text messages and offer pointers on the tone of your email, similar to what's available with Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant, which costs £19 a month to use in applications like Word, Outlook, and Excel.
Elsewhere, AI will also be used to transcribe recordings in the Voice Memo app — so that you'll be able to read through transcription without using a third-party service. A similar feature is already available with audio messages sent in iMessage.
Apple will leverage generative AI to generate never-before-seen emoji based on your prompts, rumours suggest. These will be suggested when composing a new text message, WhatsApp, email, and more.
Generative AI is a growing category of artificial intelligence that involves building models capable of producing new and original content. While traditional AI systems rely on explicit programming, generative AI can dream-up entirely new images, paragraphs of text, travel itineraries, recipes, computer code, video, or music.
iOS 17, the latest major iteration of the iPhone operating system, brought the ability to customise your contact photo on any iPhone when you make a call, added stickers across chat apps, and enabled live transcription of incoming voicemails — so you can decide whether to pick-up or not at a glance
APPLE PRESS OFFICETo do this, the AI model is trained on a vast amount of data — from books to online articles. OpenAI trained ChatGPT with billions of publicly-availablewebpages as well as information licensed from third-parties.
By crawling thousands of articles, dictionary definitions, and academic papers, the AI is able to mimic human language and regurgitate facts from the content in its training data.
Improvements to photo and video editing will also be enhanced by Artificial Intelligence, something that was one of the standout features in the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24+, and Galaxy S24 Ultra.
The Californian company is expected to bundle all of these features under the banner "Apple Intelligence", or "AI" for short. Rumours of a deal with OpenAI to licence its Large Language Model (LLM) power some of this new functionality have circled online for weeks, although there doesn't seem to be a consensus on whether Apple will develop its own systems, pay OpenAI for its latest GPT-4o model, or a mixture of both.
Outside of from AI, Apple is rumoured to completely overhaul the homescreen on iOS.
Since the launch of the first iPhone, apps have been stubbornly fixed to a strict grid. Even the addition of interactive Widgets in iOS 14, launched in late 2020, had to conform to the same layout, although they did break up the monotony.
But that could all be about to change in iOS 18, with the next update finally offering iPhone owners the same level of customisation that smartphones powered by Android have enjoyed for years. Not only will smartphone owners be able to place applications, folders, and widgets wherever they want — but sources speaking to Bloomberg suggest that iPhone owners will be able to alter the colour of app icons too.
If Apple sticks with its usual approach, we'll get a glimpse at some of the biggest new additions coming to iOS 18 during the WWDC opening keynote, which will be hosted by CEO Tim Cook and streamed on YouTube. This will be followed by months of beta testing so that app developers can ensure their software works with all of the new goodies. iOS 18 will most likely roll-out worldwide to millions of iPhone owners in September or October.
It's unclear whether every iPhone model currently on iOS 17 will enjoy the free upgrade to iOS 18.
Regardless, with so much Artificial Intelligence optimisation in the latest chipsets designed by the teams at Apple, we'd expect many of the headline iOS 18 features to be reserved for the newest iPhone models. We'll confirm the exact list of iPhones compatible with iOS 18 during WWDC.
Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference is held every year at the technology company's headquarters in Cupertino, California
APPLE PRESS OFFICE
In the meantime, this is the list of all iPhone models capable of running iOS 17.
Speaking ahead of WWDC, Apple CEO Tim Cook teased that the US firm had been spending a “tremendous amount of time and effort” on AI.
“As we look ahead, we will continue to invest in these and other technologies that shape our future. That includes AI, where we continue to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort and we’re excited to share details of our ongoing work in that space later this year,” Tim Cook told investors at an earnings call.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Apple is purportedly spending $1 billion every year on AI development. Siri, the chatty AI assistant built into every iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, Apple TV, and iPad, could be a big benefactor of that colossal spend.
CEO Tim Cook will take to the stage at 6pm BST (10am PT / 1pm ET) on Monday June 10. GB News will have all of the latest developments from WWDC in Cupertino, California so stayed tuned.
