After months of hype and anticipation, Apple has finally released generative AI features for iPhone, iPad and Mac users. Apple calls its AI "Apple Intelligence," claiming it has been implemented smartly and securely. However, I think Apple is a bit late to the AI party! Rival companies like Google and Samsung have already added generative AI to their smartphones.
Even after announcing the rollout of the Apple Intelligence features after 1.5 months since the iPhone 16 launch, Apple hasn’t released all the AI features. The company said that they have released the first set of Apple Intelligence features, which means we have to wait until 2025 to get all the AI features teased at Apple WWDC event in June.
Nevertheless, Apple has still managed to bring some important generative AI features to your iPhones.
While I have already covered the list of all the new AI features coming to your iPhones and how to use them, I think it’s equally important to help readers understand what exactly Apple Intelligence is and how it works on your iPhone.
What Is Apple Intelligence And How It Works
According to the Cupertino-based tech giant, Apple Intelligence is a system of generative AI models that are specialised to help you with your everyday tasks. It can help you rewrite or proofread your emails or notes, summarise your missed messages, create custom memories in Photos, generate images and more.
Apple Intelligence is designed to deliver personalised intelligence without Apple collecting your personal data.
To provide a customised experience, Apple Intelligence uses information on your device including across your apps, like your upcoming calendar events and your frequently used apps. It identifies the data necessary to provide to a generative model in order to best assist you, without requiring access to or storage of the data by Apple.
Apple says that Apple Intelligence models run entirely on your device so a task can be completed without data leaving the device.
For example, when Apple Intelligence provides you with preview summaries of your emails, messages and notifications, these summaries are generated by on-device models.
There are times, however, when Apple Intelligence needs to leverage a model that requires more computational power than your device can provide on its own. For these tasks, Apple Intelligence sends your request to Private Cloud Compute.
Private Cloud Compute is a server-based intelligence system designed to handle more complex requests while protecting your privacy.
For example, when you use Writing Tools to proofread or edit an email, your device may send the email to Private Cloud Compute for a server-based model to do the proofreading or editing.
When you initiate an Apple Intelligence task, a model running on your device analyses whether the task can be completed on your device.
If a larger, server-based model is required, Apple Intelligence uses Private Cloud Compute to send only data relevant to your request to be processed on Apple silicon servers.
The data sent to and returned by Private Cloud Compute is not stored or made accessible to Apple. The data is processed only to fulfil your request, after which point the results are returned securely to your device and are not retained by Private Cloud Compute.
When your device sends a request to Private Cloud Compute, Apple only collects limited information about the request, such as the approximate size of the request and response, which features are used for the request and how long the request takes to complete. This data does not include any information about the content of your request or the returned result.
As per Apple, you can turn on transparency logging for Apple Intelligence on your device to see how your data is processed.
Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Intelligence Report. Next turn on Record Apple Intelligence Activity.
After requests are made, you can export a file.