Cupertino, California: Apple on Monday unveiled its new iPhone lineup — the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 — which the company said are “designed from the ground up” for artificial intelligence capabilities that go beyond the generative AI features that ChatGPT has become famous for since it emerged on the global stage in late 2022.
The company also announced the new Apple Watch X, which CEO Tim Cook described as the company’s thinnest watch ever with its largest display, as well as upgrades to its AirPods and AirPods Max lineup.
But the highlight of Monday’s event was the features of the new iPhone 16 series, which many believe could be the most accessible way the world will experience AI. At its core are the latest A18 and A18 Pro chips that power Apple Intelligence, the company’s proprietary generative AI that can churn out text, images and other content on command.
According to Apple, the A18 Pro is currently the fastest smartphone chip, ahead of competing products including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips.
“Our next generation iPhone was designed from the ground up for Apple Intelligence — this marks the beginning of an exciting new era,” Cook said.
Apple said all of Apple Intelligence’s features will be available for free to all compatible iPhone users. Android phones are also getting started on AI efforts, with Google stepping up its efforts to integrate its Gemini product into Android.
To differentiate itself from competitors, most tasks are performed on the iPhone itself, rather than in the cloud, which keeps data private – a differentiation that requires a special processor that the company introduced in the latest version of its iPhones last year.
Apple also showed off new AI features that people are increasingly becoming accustomed to when interacting with AI chatbots: For example, the new phone will let you “rewrite a rough note into a polished dinner invitation,” create new images and emojis by typing a description, and search for photos by describing what was happening when they were taken.
The company is also building AI into the camera, which it’s calling “visual intelligence,” which will enable the phone to provide contextual information and actions, like identifying the breed of dog in front of the user or showing restaurant reviews when pointed at a sign.
Apple’s change of direction began three months ago when it previewed a new approach at its developers conference, helping to build anticipation for Monday’s showcase.
Since that June announcement, competitors like Samsung and Google have also made advances in AI. Google announced its latest Pixel smartphones last month, packed with its own AI features, instead of sticking to the traditional October schedule in an attempt to beat Apple’s iPhone 16 launch.
The iPhone accounted for more than half of Apple’s $383 billion in sales last year.
The company touted a new feature for the watch that will detect sleep apnea, and said it expects to get approval from medical regulators in the U.S., Europe and Japan later this month.
The company has introduced a new noise-cancelling option to the new AirPods 4, a key feature of the more expensive AirPods Pro earphones.
AirPods Pro are also getting feature upgrades that will be available to owners of AirPods Pro 2 when they launch in September 2022. These include hearing protection that softens loud sounds, hearing awareness that provides clinically validated hearing tests, and a new feature that turns the device into a “professional hearing aid.”
The AirPods Max have also been updated with a USB-C port.