Apple Could Introduce AI Notification Summary, Conversational Voice for Siri at WWDC 2024: Report

Apple is working on introducing an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered notification summary feature when it unveils iOS 18 at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2024, as per a report. The Cupertino-based tech giant is likely to unveil several “practical” AI features when it hosts its annual developer-focused event on June 10. Another planned feature will reportedly make Siri more conversational as the AI might add natural and emotive speech to the virtual assistant. Apart from these, AI functionality could also make its way to Apple’s Safari, Photos, and Notes apps.

Apple to Upgrade Siri With AI Features

AppleInsider reports that the tech giant is planning to upgrade Siri in a major way by incorporating AI capabilities in it. Citing people familiar with the matter, the publication states that Apple has internally named its AI initiatives project Greymatter and it is working on introducing a feature called “Greymatter Catch Up”. It is essentially a notification summarisation feature, but the publication claims it will work via Siri.

Siri might also be able to handle complex commands better, the report claimed. It is said to be getting a new smart response framework and an on-device large language model (LLM) which will understand the context of a request and will adjust its replies. The report also expects the language to be more conversational with the inclusion of the LLM.

Another focus area for Apple is to integrate AI features into its existing apps to make the user experience smoother. For instance, a previous report claimed that the Safari browser might get a web page summarisation feature.

This could be similar to the features offered by Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot. Additionally, a Web Eraser feature might also be introduced that can delete any element from a web page including banner ads, images, and text.

The Photos app could also get an AI tool dubbed ‘Clean Up’ which is said to offer ‘Photoshop-grade’ editing capabilities to users. The feature can reportedly remove any unwanted background objects from the image.

An AI-based real-time audio transcription feature could also be added to the Notes app. A report detailing this feature claimed that users will be able to read, edit, copy, and share these transcripts later. To easily catch up to long transcriptions or notes, a text summarisation feature is also being added to the Notes app.

Reportedly, these in-house AI features are being powered by Apple’s Ajax LLM, which the company is keeping under wraps for now.