On June 10, 2024, at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced the upcoming features that would accompany the new iPhone lineup.
Those features were majorly AI-based. And here AI is not Artificial Intelligence. It is Apple Intelligence (yeah, I know). It was a bummer when Apple announced the new iPhone 16 lineup without the new features. They promised these AI features would be available with the new iOS update.
It’s been a while since Apple rolled out the new iOS with those features and I have been playing around with them. Everything looked great and exaggerated in the presentation, especially Apple’s presentation. But my initial reaction was meh!
As of now, they are fun to use and that is why I consider them a gimmick. They might not make a huge difference in your daily life. With that said, that was my first impression of Apple intelligence but I did dig a bit deeper to find what’s great and what’s not so great. So, join me as I unfold exactly that.
Let’s Start with Notifications Summary
Well, here is the problem – if you haven’t turned off notifications for your apps (especially the commercial apps with promotional messages), you are going to receive a big load of them.
And if you are on a run, it might get difficult to catch up with all of them. Even if you are not, it’s a clutter under that notification bar. Apple tried to fix it up with notification summaries. But did it?
They did try and summarize the notifications but not in a way that could help the users. They mostly don’t make sense.
It wasn’t just me; people are posting it on the X about how funny these notification summaries can be. I have seen some screenshots where the AI merged two notifications: one from a message from a guy’s daughter and the other one from news about a storm. It looked like the daughter was saying something about ruckus caused by the storm.
All in all, these notification summaries are a great idea but the execution is just not there. This feature has quite a big room for improvement in it.
ChatGPT’s Integration into the Siri
Some of you might not agree with that but I think Siri is a dumb digital assistant and it needed support. Well, that support is here now from OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is integrated with the new iOS update and when Siri doesn’t know how to answer your question, it will take your permission to ask ChatGPT the same query. ChatGPT is arguably the best chatbot and I love using it but having simple access with a mere tap of an action button is really helpful.
You can tap on a picture of a place and ask for the itinerary to visit that place. You can ask it to read a certain document and summarize that entire thing for you. It can even search for anything that is listed on the internet.
Recently, I was trying to find the contact number of Xfinity customer service (Xfinity is my choice for a reliable internet service provider) and ChatGPT integrated Siri was accurate and quick in responding. I like that!
All in all, it is greatly helpful to have ChatGPT onboard and seamlessly integrated into the new iOS.
Genmoji is Here
People were looking forward to it and it was pretty hyped up. It is here now and I have used it a couple of times and that’s it – it wasn’t for me.
What is it? Obvious of the name, it uses generative AI to create emojis. If you want to send a customized emoji or react to a weird message with a weird emoji, you just type your command and then it will create the emoji.
Was it accurate? Yeah, it was accurate but it struggled too. Also, it has been limited to producing emojis that might contain graphics or something harmful. For example, I tried creating a Genmoji with a cat holding a gun but it came up with nothing.
It can create astronauts in the ocean and much more. Genmoji is fun to use but I want to see more useful features from these AI-powered updates.
I Like Priority Notifications
So far, the feature I love about the new Apple Intelligence – priority notifications.
What it does is when you are at work or you just don’t want your phone to distract you unless it is important, it blocks unnecessary notifications. Also, this feature only works in the Focus Mode.
Though AI automatically detects and chooses which notifications are important, you can customize what type of notifications you deem important.
Also, this priority notification feature works really well in your mail app too, but not in the Gmail app. It filters out the necessary emails on top and the rest goes in your default inbox.
It is a great feature that declutters your notification bar to a huge extent.
So, is Apple Intelligence Intelligent?
With few updates still pending and in the current state, I don’t think it is intelligent. Most of the features like Genmoji are merely for fun and those that are oriented to actually make your life easier are not accurate.
The bottom line is that it is the first generation of Apple Intelligence and it can improve a lot. So, let’s just wait for Apple if they can fix the problems and bring out something good.
