Weekly Prompt: Apple WWDC 2024 and other news

Apple Leaps into AI with Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024

At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2024 this week, the tech giant unveiled a suite of AI-driven products and features, marking a bold shift toward artificial intelligence. Central to this announcement was the introduction of "Apple Intelligence," a sophisticated AI system designed to enhance personalization across iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

Apple Intelligence includes several new functionalities like managing notifications, drafting email responses, and summarizing text. Notably, Siri received a significant AI upgrade, allowing it to control apps more effectively and integrate with ChatGPT, enhancing its contextual understanding and personal relevance. This integration means Siri can now function as an AI chatbot, handle written instructions, and perform actions within apps based on voice prompts.

Other AI-powered features demonstrated include generating custom emojis and cleaning up photo backgrounds. Apple stressed that its AI is powered by both on-device processing and a "private" cloud computing system to ensure user privacy.

Beyond AI, Apple announced iOS 18, which introduces a more customizable iPhone home screen and Rich Communication Services (RCS) support for Messages. Additionally, iPads will finally get a native Calculator app, and macOS 15 will offer iPhone mirroring capabilities on Macs. Updates to visionOS were also highlighted, alongside the global expansion of the Vision Pro headset.

The Vision Pro, previously available only in the U.S., will soon be accessible in countries including China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. Other incremental updates include a redesigned Photos app, hiking maps in Apple Maps, tweaks to the Wallet app, and satellite texting for areas without cell tower coverage.

These announcements reflect Apple's effort to catch up with competitors in the AI space and address slowing global sales by integrating more AI features into its consumer products.

Sources: Apple, The Guardian, TechCrunch

Additional prompts

BeReal has been sold to French to video game and app developer Voodoo for $500 million. Voodoo plans to launch ads in the app and to grow its active user base to 100 million. Read more

Instagram is testing ads that pop up on users’ friends' Stories, the short-form image and video feature located at the top of the platform’s main feed. So far, the Story ads being shared are for “Super Rumble,” a game for Meta’s virtual-reality gaming app Horizon Worlds. Read more

Pinterest has announced some new features for advertisers, including improved campaign automation, customized background generation (powered by AI) and Promoted Pin collages to showcase related products.  Read more

YouTube tests image-based search via Google Lens. YouTube is trying out a new search option, with some users now able to use Google Lens to search for YouTube clips related to an image. Read more