AI isn’t just an upgrade or a possible selling point for Apple CEO Tim Cook. It is, instead, revolutionary.
In a Sunday interview with the Wall Street Journal, Cook praised Apple Intelligence, Apple’s AI features that do everything from summarizing breakup texts to generating custom emojis. Cook said he used Apple Intelligence for tasks like generating overviews of long emails; he said it saved him time throughout the day.
“It’s changed my life,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
Tim Cook. Photo Credit: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Apple Intelligence is rolling out later this month to eligible iPhones, and last week, Apple released a new iPad Mini designed with AI in mind.
Apple wasn’t the first to explore AI’s use cases. Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft beat it to the punch, with Google releasing an AI smartphone a month before Apple did, OpenAI coming out with ChatGPT in November 2022, and Microsoft introducing Copilot in March 2023.
In the WSJ interview, Cook acknowledged that Apple was late to the AI game, but “we’ve done [AI] in a way that we think is best for the customer.” The company has tremendous reach, with nearly half of all smartphone users in the U.S. opting for an iPhone as of 2022.
Apple is going for staying power; the slogan under Apple Intelligence reads “AI for the rest of us.”
That means that Apple Intelligence will roll out gradually. According to Bloomberg, eligible iPhones will get features like notification summaries and smart reply texts through the iOS 18.1 update on October 28. Later, Apple plans to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into the iPhone, to answer questions that Siri can’t. The AI upgrades apply to the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 16 lineup, and iPads and Macs that are running an M1 chip and up.
Related: Apple Is Reportedly Saving the Most Anticipated Siri AI Upgrades For Next Year
