The new Apple Intelligence within the new Apple iPhone 16 provides a surprisingly practical approach to AI. It’s straightforward, helpful, and well, boring — a stark contrast to Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs, which position themselves as the cusp of a revolutionary new era of computing, complete with a mandatory new keyboard button.
Apple, which touts itself as the foundation for creative work, could have used AI to allow creatives to generate “photos” of imaginary objects, as Google’s Pixel now does. It could have used AI, either running locally on in the cloud, to produce AI-generated art, or AI-produced facsimiles of celebrity voices. It did none of that.
Instead, the Apple iPhone 16 uses AI as a productivity tool, first and foremost, with a focus on supercharging existing features with machine smarts.
Apple is revamping Siri with a new AI foundation to help it better understand what you yourself are looking for, and follow complex conversations. AI organizes your photos into albums of your favorite people. …