Apple has begun rolling out iOS 18.2, which includes the much-lauded integration of ChatGPT with Siri. It’s available today for iPhone, iPad and Mac, but only for newer hardware. On iPhone, you need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer to access Apple Intelligence, the name for Apple’s suite of new AI integrations.

Users of the latest iOS already have access to some early AI-powered features, like the ability to rewrite emails and receive notification summaries. For example, if a user receives a flood of text messages from a friend, Apple will try to consolidate them into a short notification. This feature has drawn ridicule from Apple for its insensitive portrayal of a person’s breakup. It can also summarize emails, which could be useful for triage.

iOS 18.2 also introduces Genmoji, which allows users to create custom emoji by simply writing a description. Early beta users have described them as cartoonish and superficial.

Other AI-powered features now available include a Focus Mode that allows users to mute notifications but attempts to intelligently detect and forward important notifications – like a text message from a child. Users can now also edit their photos to remove objects.

The ChatGPT integration is triggered when a user asks Siri a complicated question – the kind of questions that Siri is notoriously bad at answering. When Siri wants to send a question to ChatGPT, it first asks the user for permission to do so. Apple says OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, does not store user requests.

Using ChatGPT through Siri doesn’t cost any money, but users can pay for ChatGPT Plus or Pro tiers through Apple if they want access to all of the chatbot’s features. Neither Apple nor OpenAI have ever said whether there is money in circulation. When users subscribe to a premium tier of ChatGPT on iOS, Apple gets a 30% discount, which seems like a great deal.

Anyone who has ever used ChatGPT or other models knows that the problem of hallucinations (causing erroneous reactions) remains harmful. It feels out of character for Apple to release half-baked technology with such fanfare, especially since it doesn’t control ChatGPT’s output, which is constantly changing while OpenAI tinkers with its models (i.e. users often perceive that the chatbot ” “has become stupider”). . But Apple has pushed the services hard to sell more devices because iPhones last longer and customers replace them less often. The goal is to convince the more than one billion iPhone users that they need these new features. Apple is developing its own internal AI for many of these features and will likely want to have more control over their performance in the future.

What’s interesting is that with more than two billion active devices in its ecosystem, Apple may have the best opportunity to introduce new artificial intelligence products to the general public. Although ChatGPT is now the best-known brand in AI, its 300 million active users pale in comparison to the numbers Apple could achieve with Apple Intelligence. Many “normals” still don’t use AI chatbots, and that could change. Possibly even worse if people rely on bad information from their phones.

Aside from ChatGPT, at least the rest of Apple’s AI integrations have clear practical use. Other companies like Google have introduced “agents” that can handle tasks like navigating the internet for users, which may have more potential than chatbots, which are bad at what they do.

Apple feels like the company doesn’t have much vision these days and is betting on the AI ​​bandwagon after failing to find a market with the Vision Pro and canceling its car project. Hopefully this will work in the company’s favor. The company is reportedly investing heavily in developing new server chips designed for AI to meet the high computing demands of all these new features.