Last week, at WWDC 2024, Apple revealed its new AI system, Apple Intelligence. It will be available across its iOS, iPadOS, and macOS hardware, specifically for the iPhone 15 Pro and M-series iPads and Macs. With the new AI features locked to newer products, Apple’s AI chief recently revealed why the new AI system is limited to its flagship smartphone and Apple silicon iPads and Macs.
Appearing on The Talk Show Live (spotted by The Verge), Apple SVP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea explained that running large language models (LLMs) requires a lot of computing power, so the device running the LLMs needs to be fast and powerful enough to handle it.
“The inference of large language models is incredibly computationally expensive,” Giannandrea explained. “So it’s a combination of bandwidth in the device, it’s the size of the ANE, it’s the oomph in the device to actually do these models fast enough to be useful. You could, in theory, run these models on a very old device. But it would be so slow it would not be useful.”
Listening (or reading this), you would probably think this was Apple’s excuse to sell new devices, specifically pushing to sell more iPhone 15 Pros. But Apple’s Marketing Chief Greg Joswiak pushed back on that idea, saying, “No, not at all. Otherwise, we’ve been smart enough just to do recent iPads and Macs, too.”
Apple Intelligence will introduce a slew of AI-powered features to the applicable devices. Some of the features coming thanks to Apple Intelligence include Writing Tools, which will offer the ability for AI to rewrite and proofread documents (akin to features available via Grammarly), Genmoji, which will use generative AI (GenAI) to create new emotes based on text descriptions provided by the user, and an overhaul to Siri.
Since its release last year, the iPhone 15 Pro has placed greater emphasis on making it a “flagship” smartphone. With the A17 Pro system on a chip (SoC), Apple has made the iPhone 15 Pro the first iPhone to introduce Apple intelligence, the first iPhone to support hardware-based raytracing, and the first to receive console-quality ports that run natively on the device.
In our 9/10 review of the iPhone 15 Pro, IGN wrote: “The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max have more going on than their similar outward appearance suggests. Even more pro-level camera features, serious gaming power, and long-overdue freedom from the proprietary Lightning cables make this a significant upgrade over last year’s phone.”
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
