Apple spruces up products with AI but avoids the buzz word

The omission was in contrast to how other tech giants such as Alphabet-owned Google and Microsoft have approached the hype recently, including talking about AI during earnings calls and at events on how they are embracing the technology.

Instead, Apple used words such as “transformer language model”, “machine learning” and “ML”, when talking about the company’s AI efforts.

The company unveiled a costly augmented-reality headset called the Vision Pro, which uses AI, while also adding AI for smaller, incremental upgrades to some of its products and apps.

Here are some of the products that received AI upgrades:

Journal: New journaling app uses on-device machine learning (ML) to suggest writing prompts based on users’ data such as photos, location, music and more.

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Autocorrect: Using an AI-powered language model and machine learning, the improved functionality delivers better predictive text recommendations, in line with user’s writing style. The dictation feature was also improved.Voicemail: Live voicemail, powered by on-device neural engine, generates live transcript as the caller records their message.

PDFs in iPad: New iPadOS 17 uses machine learning to identify fields in a PDF document, helping users quickly fill them in.

Live Speech: New accessibility feature allows users to type what they want to say and have it read aloud during phone, FaceTime and in-person conversations.

Personal voice: Gives users at risk of speech loss the option to create a voice that sounds like theirs.

Photos app: New ML features allow the iPhone to recognize more photos of user’s favorite people, as well as their cats and dogs.

Video conferencing: New MacOS Sonoma introduces Presenter Overlay, a video effect that shows the user on top of the content they are sharing and triggers certain chat reactions using hand gestures.

Audio technology: New software update to AirPods delivers personalized audio experience, including automatically changing media settings based on user’s preferences and environmental conditions. During in-person interaction, AirPods will automatically lower volume and enhance voices in front, while reducing background noise.