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Ahead of WWDC, people were curious to know whether Apple was finally going to announce the company’s move to advance in the AI race.
To the dismay of many, the event came and went without the unveiling of a generative AI project.
Too, I Tried the Apple Vision Pro and It Far Exceeded My Expectations
Despite not openly participating in the Generative AI boom started by ChatGPT last November, Apple still made its presence felt in the AI scene, albeit in a more subtle way.
Behind many of Apple’s software and hardware announcements at WWDC, AI is what made many of the advanced features possible.
In case this flew under your radar, here’s a roundup of all the different ways AI made a presence at WWDC.
Vision Pro Features
Apple Vision Pro was just announced on June 5, 2023. Jason Hinner / ZDNET
Apple’s first mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro, was WWDC’s biggest announcement.
The headset was designed to blend your current reality with the virtual one to turn normal activities, such as looking at your laptop or watching movies, into an immersive one.
Too: wear glasses? Apple’s already expensive Vision Pro headset will cost you even more
Vision Pro introduced a major change to the FaceTime call experience.
While wearing the headset, users will be able to see “life-size” tiles of each person on the call and each person’s audio coming from their individual tile position. This allows for more natural conversation.
Meanwhile, people on calls will see a “digital personality” of the Vision Pro wearer, and that’s where AI comes in.
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The headset uses Apple’s advanced machine learning technology to create a realistic, virtual avatar that reflects the wearer’s facial and arm movements in real time from an initial facial scan.
Avatars are a key feature of the metaverse in video-conferencing, and Apple’s take on it relies on artificial intelligence to create its avatars.
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In addition, the headset is controlled by hand and eye tracking technology as well as voice commands. Voice recognition technology, such as Siri, is a prominent and early example of artificial intelligence.
AirPods personalized volume
Although there weren’t any new AirPods announcements in terms of hardware, Apple did announce some pretty cool new features that will enhance your listening experience.
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Personalized Volume is a new feature that will optimize users’ volume experience over time using their environmental conditions and listening preferences.
The feature is powered by machine learning, to understand and act on the user’s listening preferences.
Enhanced Autofill on iPadOS
The iPad got its share of new features through iPadOS 17, including a new Health app and the ability to control smart home items from the Home screen.
Too: Every piece of software Apple just announced at WWDC
The iPad’s new PDF enhancements were a standout feature.
Through a feature called “Enhanced Autofill”, your iPad will be able to identify fields in PDFs to autofill personal information with saved information from Contacts.
The app potentially relies on AI to accurately identify the places on a page that need to be filled in and glean information from its own contacts.
journal app
As part of its iOS announcements, Apple unveiled a new Journal app with which users can log their everyday activities to improve their mental and physical health.
Too: Apple’s new Journal app is coming to iPhone: Everything you need to know
One of the app’s highlights is its ability to offer personalized suggestions based on your activities in other apps, such as photos, music, or even your location.
AI is involved in the app’s ability to analyze user behavior and produce natural language prompts based on its findings.
better autocorrect
If you’ve ever used autocorrect, it’s possible that it accidentally turned your text into something embarrassing or wrong. To address that issue, iOS 17 will feature more accurate autocorrect and word prediction.
Too, 5 useful iOS 17 features Apple quietly released at WWDC 2023
Apple says the iOS 17 keyboard will leverage the “Transformer language model” for these improved text features, confirming the involvement of AI.
