Apple’s AI lead explains why Apple Intelligence is exclusive to iPhone 15 Pro – IGN

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Last week, at WWDC 2024, Apple unveiled its new AI system, Apple Intelligence. It will be available across its iOS, iPadOS, and macOS devices, especially the iPhone 15 Pro and M-series iPads and Macs. With new AI features locked into the newest products, Apple’s AI chief recently revealed why the new AI system is limited to its flagship smartphone and Apple’s silicon-powered iPad and Mac.

Appearing on The Talk Show Live (spotted by The Verge), Apple’s VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea explained that running large language models (LLMs) requires a lot of computing power, so hardware that uses LLMs it must be fast and powerful enough to handle it.

“Completing large language models is computationally prohibitively expensive,” explained Giannandrea. “So it’s a combination of bandwidth on the device, it’s the size of the ANE, it’s the oomph on the device to make these models fast enough to be useful. In theory, you could run these models on a device too old. But it would be so slow as to be useless.”

Listening (or reading this), you’d probably think this was Apple’s excuse to sell new devices, especially pushing to sell more of the iPhone 15 Pro. But Apple’s chief marketing officer, Greg Joswiak, shot down the idea, saying, “No, not at all. Otherwise, we’ve been smart enough to just make the latest iPad and Mac, too.”

Apple Intelligence will introduce a variety of AI-powered features to applicable devices. Some of the features coming thanks to Apple Intelligence include Writing Tools, which will provide AI with the ability to rewrite and proofread documents (similar to features available through Grammarly), Genmoji, which will use generative AI (GenAI) to create new emotions based on user-supplied text descriptions and a review in Siri.

Since its release last year, the iPhone 15 Pro has put more emphasis on making it a “flagship” smartphone. With the A17 Pro system on a chip (SoC), Apple has made the iPhone 15 Pro the first iPhone to feature Apple Intelligence, the first iPhone to support hardware-based beam tracking, and the first to receive quality ports consoles that work natively the device.

In our 9/10 review of the iPhone 15 Pro, IGN wrote: “The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max have more going on than their similar exteriors suggest. Even more pro-level camera features, serious gaming power and long-overdue freedom from proprietary Lightning cables makes this a significant improvement over last year’s phone.”

Taylor is a reporter at IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TayNixster.