CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) ᅳ Apple charged into the artificial intelligence craze Monday with a new lineup of iPhones that marks the company’s latest attempt to seize onto a technology trend and turn it into a cultural phenomenon.
The four different models of the iPhone 16 will each boast special chips necessary to power a suite of AI tools that Apple hopes will make its marquee product even more indispensable and reverse a recent sales slump.
The AI features in Apple’s portfolio are designed to turn its hitherto erring virtual assistant Siri into a wiser and more capable sidekick, automate a sea of mundane tasks, and pull off a bunch of other crowd-pleasing tricks, including the creation of customized emojis in seconds.
Following the standing ovation after Monday’s event, Apple CEO Tim Cook promised the AI package will unlock “innovations that will make a true difference in people’s lives.
But the innovations will not kick in when the new iPhones ᅳ ranging between $800 and $1,200 ᅳ arrive in stores on Sept. 20.
The lion’s share of AI capabilities demonstrated for Apple will be deployed as part of a free software upgrade to iOS 18, the operating system that will drive the iPhone 16 due to be released between October and December. US English will be the language supported at launch, but support for other languages will be available in an update next year, per the company.
That’s all part of a new approach that Apple previewed three months ago at a developers conference to stir up more enthusiasm for a new generation of iPhones amid a rare sales slump for the beloved devices.
Since Apple’s June conference, rivals such as Samsung and Google have taken bigger steps in AI-a technology widely forecast to bring about the most profound shifts to computing since the emergence of the first iPhone 17 years ago.
Just as Apple transformed fledgling smartphones into must-have technology in 21st-century society, Cupertino, California-based Apple is wagering it can pull off something similar with its fashionably late entrance to the field of artificial intelligence.
To make it sound different from the early leaders in AI, technology being baked into the iPhone 16 is being touted as “Apple Intelligence.” Despite unique branding, Apple’s new approach borrows many of the features that were already there in the Samsung Galaxy S24 that came out in January and the Google Pixel 9 that came out last month.
Apple could have waited another year for further development, but initial take up of AI-powered devices from the likes of Samsung has been encouraging and Apple is keen to capitalize on this market,” said PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore.
Apple has attempted to preserve its long-standing commitment to privacy by having AI tailor-made so most of the technological tricks can be done on the device itself without the need to rely on the behemoth banks of computers at often remote data centers. When a job involves an exchange of information with a data centre, Apple claims this is done in a strictly controlled manner such that no personal data is stored remotely.
While the corralling of personal information shared through Apple’s AI intrinsically reduces the chances the data is used or misused against a user’s wishes, that does little in terms of ensuring any semblance of security. A device could still be stolen or compromised through some kind of digital chicanery.
Meanwhile, the iPhone offers even more access to AI tools; for these users, the company is partnering with OpenAI to farm out more complicated tasks to users who want to interact with the popular ChatGPT chatbot.
But while Apple is releasing a free version of the operating system meant to push the new on-device AI features, the chip required to actually run the technology exists only in this year’s iPhone 16 lineup and high-end iPhone 15 models released last year.
That means most consumers who are interested in taking advantage of Apple’s approach to AI will have to buy one of the iPhone 16 models-a twist that investors are counting on will fuel a surge in demand heading into the holiday season.
That expected sales boom is the prime reason why Apple’s stock price has gained more than 10% since the June developers conference, including a slight uptick Monday after the shares initially slipped following the showcase for the latest iPhones. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives was so impressed with what he saw Monday that he predicted the new AI iPhones will propel Apple’s market value through the $4 trillion threshold next year for the first time. That forecast translates into an increase of roughly 20% from Monday’s closing price of $220.91 for Apple’s stock.
Along with its new iPhones, Apple revealed a refreshed smartwatch that will boast an on-device feature for sleep apnea detection, among other updates, and the next generation of wireless headphones, AirPods Pro, which will let it double as a hearing aid with future software.
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