WWDC is coming soon, and there are a lot of rumours about Apple introducing new AI features to catch up with Google and Microsoft. There are also reports about Apple’s potential partnership with OpenAI to leverage their technology. With that in mind, I wanted to consider all the possible enhancements I would like to see if Apple is really going to use modern technologies like generative AI and large language models.
Siri
The first obvious improvement is Siri. OpenAI has recently demoed (though hasn’t shipped yet) how their new model can be an excellent voice assistant. After years of complaints and jokes about Siri's shortcomings, Apple has not done much to improve it. This is the perfect opportunity for Apple to enhance Siri to understand user requests more accurately and parse them correctly. Just like iOS dictation allows users to seamlessly switch between dictating and typing, I hope Siri can also be used both as a voice assistant and a chatbot seamlessly in the same way.
Voice Memos
In voice memos, Apple can provide the ability to transcribe the voice memos and make the transcriptions available for use. This is a straightforward feature that Apple can introduce, potentially rendering third-party apps like Otter obsolete.
Photos
Apple needs to enhance facial recognition in the Photos app, as it currently lags behind Google Photos. Improving the underlying models for facial recognition would be a significant step forward. Additionally, Apple can introduce AI-based photo editing features, such as the ability to remove objects or people from images. Also, enhancing the photo selection algorithm for the photo widget would also be beneficial.
Notes
The Notes app has tremendous potential for AI integration. Beyond obvious features like summarising notes and generating notes from prompts, several other enhancements could be made. Semantic search can improve the accuracy of search results by understanding the intent and context of search terms. To help organise notes, AI could suggest tags and links to related notes. One feature I would love to see is something similar to what apps like Mem and Reflect offer called “Similar Notes”, a feature that displays other notes that are similar in meaning or belong to the same topic, in a sidebar.
Reminders and Calendar
In the Reminders and Calendar apps, natural language processing could simplify the creation of reminders and events. A novel feature can be introduced for scheduling reminders by analysing the calendar and reminders history to understand user patterns and find optimal times to schedule tasks.
Email and Messages
For the Email app, Apple can implement obvious features such as summarising emails, assisting in generating responses, and providing semantic search capabilities.
Shortcuts
While Shortcuts are popular, they can be confusing and difficult to create for the average user. A transformative feature would be the ability to generate shortcuts automatically from natural language. Doing this can significantly increase user adoption of shortcuts.
Phone Calls
I would like Apple to adopt a feature similar to Google Pixel’s call screening, where the AI can answer calls on behalf of the user, transcribe the caller's voice, and provide responses back to the caller.
