iOS 18: what's known so far
If you’re using Siri for something more complicated than weather forecasts, chances are you’ve been disappointed with her performance. Especially if you’re talking in a language other than English. Truth be told, you’re not alone, and Apple’s voice assistant really tends to underdeliver every now and then. Browsing side-by-side comparisons of such tools, you’re likely to find Siri looking bleak against the competition. But that, it seems, will change with iOS 18, coming in September 2024.
Apple’s AI push
Disclaimer: the thoughts about features and efforts described below are based on rumors circulating in the professional community, so take them with a grain of salt. That said, the general direction of development of the Cupertino company is quite clear, since it’s not just its top management making the decisions nowadays but also the competitors that have advanced farther and shaped customer expectations.
Over the last year or so, a number of sources have reported that Apple is working on its own large language model, LLM, which passes for AI nowadays. So far, it’s an entirely internal project with no specific public release date. What’s known, however, is that Apple is using OpenAI’s products to test AppleGPT, and the latter is planned to be an integral part of the entire ecosystem. In particular, this LLM will:
- power the all-new Siri in the upcoming iOS 18;
- be integrated with Pages, Keynote, Numbers and do summaries, content generation, on-request analysis, etc.;
- improve the notorious autocorrect feature of the Messages app;
- boost and improve Spotlight Search, making it a truly versatile tool;
- aid with coding as part of Xcode (autocompletion of blocks of code, testing, etc.);
This is how AI sees the future Siri crunching numbers for you
This means that iOS 18 will be one of the most significant releases of the operating system ever, with the AI projects Apple launched some time ago finally bearing fruit. This post is an advanced news piece, i.e., the said release is not happening until September of this year, so stay tuned for more information thereabout.
