Apple is counting on its army of 34 million app developers as one of its greatest advantages as it gets ready to launch Apple Intelligence into the AI competition in Silicon Valley.
Later this month, iPhone owners will get to experience Apple Intelligence, the company’s artificial intelligence system, for the first time. For its newest line of devices, the iPhone 16, the firm is counting on Apple Intelligence to be its best selling feature.
Apple’s AI isn’t as good as the cutting edge emerging from the most sophisticated laboratories, such competitors like ChatGPT from OpenAI, Gemini from Google, and Llama from Meta. Apple doesn’t use the largest models, nor is it able to do some of the most impressive feats of the state-of-the-art speech models; OpenAI’s most recent model, for instance, has the ability to sing.
The potential for Siri to perform tasks on your phone, like as sending emails, interpreting calendars, and taking and editing images, is where Apple hopes to set its AI apart. The AI chatbots of other companies are now unable to achieve that, therefore Apple is calling on its army of third-party developers to refine their applications in order to work with Apple Intelligence. As part of the company’s long-term plans for Siri, Apple stated in June that eventually, the virtual assistant could be able to initiate any action that a user can perform within an app.
In the Apple Intelligence announcement video, machine learning director Kelsey Peterson of Apple stated, “Siri will be able to take hundreds of new actions in and across apps.”
Apple can readily do this for its own applications, but developers must adopt a new approach to app development if Apple Intelligence is to communicate with the millions of non-Apple apps. This implies that programmers will have to write hundreds or perhaps thousands of new code snippets known as App Intents.
Apple has a proven track record of enlisting the support of its developers for new platform initiatives. To this end, the company employs a tried-and-true approach that includes one-on-one attention from developer relations, a lively atmosphere at its annual developer conference, and—above all—app store promotion that can result in millions of downloads for developers who agree to participate.
In the AI competition, Apple may have one of the strongest and longest-lasting advantages if other developers adopt the Siri system and it performs as promised.
According to Jordan Morgan, an iOS developer who has created a tutorial on App Intents, “you should be able to string things together and kind of get that future we’ve all been envisioning where you can use Siri conversationally, to do a bunch of things at once.”
The question of whether Apple can persuade its millions of developers is crucial, and the company’s chances of success are slim.
The business is depending on Apple Intelligence, which is limited to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models released this year, to ignite a wave of improvements and increase stagnant iPhone sales. Should Apple’s enhanced Siri receive inadequate support from developers or not meet expectations, it may depress iPhone sales, leading consumers to opt to utilize a competitor’s virtual assistant via an application rather than the integrated Siri.
How Do App Intents Work?
For instance, Apple has created about ten intents for the Music app, which include functions like “Add to Playlist,” “Play Music,” and “Select Music.” A single app intent should define a single action, experts argue.
One use case for an app that tracks caffeine intake would be the ability to display a summary of the precise amount of caffeine a user has consumed today, according to Morgan.
Apple’s many “system experiences,” including widgets, live activities, control center, and shortcuts, will be able to rapidly display a current running tracker of how much caffeine has been tracked when that App Intent is done, all without the user ever having to launch the monitoring app.
Another major lure for some developers is system search. Through App Intents, applications will be able to display certain emails or other more detailed information under Apple’s system search, Spotlight.
Developers claim that writing an app intent simply takes a few lines of code, and that writing one doesn’t take too long.
According to Focused Work’s developer, Michael Tigas, Apple suggested in prior years that developers employ App Intents for their most crucial features.
“You should create an App Intent for your app if there is a way to modify it to perform any general action,” Tigas said.
Thankfully, developers still have time to complete writing all of the code required for App Intents. The major updates to Siri won’t be available until next year, even though Apple Intelligence will begin to roll out next month.
Developer incentives are a must for Apple.
The new Siri system from Apple is directly related to the big language models that power systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and it can interpret inquiries better even if a user speaks incorrectly.
This implies that when a user says something like “apply a photo filter to an image I took yesterday,” Siri will be able to comprehend it far more easily.
To determine the range of the most likely commands and inquiries for each particular category of applications, Apple must train and test its model.
One drawback of Apple’s strategy is that the new Siri will initially only work with a small number of app categories, beginning with photo and email applications. According to the business, Siri will eventually enable apps that are centered around word processing, reading, journaling, whiteboards, file management, browsers, cameras, and photographs.
Already, developers are planning how they may allow consumers to communicate vocally with their programs.
Superhuman, a paid email program, told CNBC that it intends to leverage Apple’s AI engine to allow users to ask queries regarding emails’ contents, such “Hey Siri, what time does my flight leave?” or “Hey Siri, when am I meeting with James to review his proposal?”
There is a drawback to Apple’s strategy, according to some developers, who fear that consumers would spend less time in their applications or mix Apple Intelligence with their own artificial intelligence capabilities.
Igor Zhadanov, CEO of Readdle, the company that creates the email app Spark, stated in an email that “developers would worry that their products might be reduced to the role of the plumbing that powers Siri, and leave them unclear on how to build sustainable businesses around it” if this story were only about App Intents.
Another disadvantage is that only a limited portion of iPhone users—those with the most recent models—will be able to use Apple Intelligence services. The small number of iPhone users may deter developers from devoting time and resources to the technology’s near-term maintenance.
