AI

The Mac’s AI announcement week continues on. Apple doesn’t have any new AI-ready Macs to announce today, but instead we’re getting a dedicated Mac app from one of the biggest AI players. Claude is now available in a Mac app from Anthropic.

California is home to many of the country’s largest AI innovators, including Apple. Today, they’re all breathing a sigh of relief. Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a major AI regulatory bill that came to his desk, while nonetheless highlighting the ‘real threats’ posed by AI.

AI is being infused into so many different services and software features we use every day. Now, it’s impacting the music we listen to as well. Today Spotify announced that it’s rolling out AI playlist generation—formerly in a limited test—to several new countries, including the US. Here’s how it works.

AI is all the rage these days, with apps and services adopting some form of AI technology all the time. Apple is doing the same with its upcoming Apple Intelligence features. But some creative apps are pushing back, including the popular iPad app Procreate which says, “AI is not our future.”

Earlier this month, after Figma AI debuted as a set of tools for aiding designers’ process, things quickly went wrong. A designer asked Figma AI’s ‘Make Design’ feature to help him design a weather app, and on every one of his multiple tries, it produced a clone of Apple’s Weather app.

After the mishap made the news, Figma immediately disabled Make Design until a full investigation could be completed. Now, the company has outlined what went wrong and what they’re doing about it.

It’s only a few days until Apple unveils its own AI features at WWDC with an emphasize on privacy. The time is right for one of the company’s chief competitors, Microsoft, to address the ‘security disaster’ that its hallmark AI feature, Recall, is said to be.

Today Microsoft has done just that. They aren’t apologizing for Recall’s security holes, but they are making changes that are meant to alleviate users’ concerns.

Apple is set to unveil a host of AI-centric updates in iOS 18 and its other software platforms this Monday at WWDC.

Much of what the company will announce is playing catch-up to its competitors, though at a scale and accessibility that’s hard to match. However, where the company is especially poised to make an AI splash is in its differentiated approach.

Unlike its competitors, Apple has strengths in two areas that are currently PR headaches for AI: privacy and the environment.

Here’s what that means for its AI reveals at WWDC.

AI features coming to iOS 18 and Apple’s other platforms may be exciting for lots of users, but for some, there exist legitimate concerns around privacy.

Apple gets it, and per a new report, the company plans to make certain iOS 18 AI features not only privacy-conscious, but also opt-in only.

Microsoft has a target on Apple’s back with its AI-centric Copilot Plus PC models. When the computers were announced, the company repeatedly claimed that they outperformed the latest M3 MacBook Airs. Today a new ad campaign sought to further entice switchers away from the Mac.

It turns out, not every aspect of the Copilot Plus PCs is ready for prime time. The hallmark AI feature Microsoft formerly demoed, Recall, has been exposed by an expert as being a security disaster.

Siri is expected to be at the center of a host of AI-related enhancements coming to iOS 18. Now, thanks to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, we have fresh information on some of the specific upgrades coming to Apple’s intelligent assistant.

Apple’s WWDC keynote is fast approaching, where the company will unveil all its AI features for iOS 18, macOS 15, and more.

I’ve written previously about how Apple has the potential to make AI mass-market with iOS 18 in a way few other companies can. I expect Apple’s presentation to largely focus on AI features that are simple to use and serve existing needs in a more convenient way. There probably won’t be many jaw-dropping moments during the keynote, but rather a lot of nice-to-haves.

However, after seeing what a new third-party autobiography app is doing with AI, I’m convinced Apple could have a blow away moment if it showed off an AI-supercharged Journal app.

AI is everywhere. Tech companies not talking about AI are hard to find. When compared to players leading in this space like OpenAI and Google, Apple is generally seen as being “behind.”

But despite AI being everywhere, in many ways it’s also still a fringe technology for the average person. It’s not truly mainstream. Sure it’s accessible to anyone with access to the web, but the number of people actually using services like ChatGPT is still relatively small compared to the total population of users with a smartphone or computer.

This is why next month’s WWDC presents Apple with tremendous opportunity. iOS 18 has the potential to truly bring AI to the masses.

MacWhisper is a super useful utility for quickly transcribing spoken audio on the Mac. Version 8 is launching today with new features around video, speed, AI, and more.

Artificial intelligence buzz is all over the news, but for all the technology’s potential, a key piece of the AI story that’s not covered enough is tech companies’ need for existing content to train AI models on—and sometimes using that content without its owners’ consent.

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Sony Music Group is putting those companies on notice with a firm warning against unauthorized use of its content.

Yesterday in its spring update, OpenAI launched a fully-native Mac app for ChatGPT and also debuted its new flagship model, GPT-4o. There was no shortage of remarkable demos and excitement, especially for Apple users mulling the rumored Apple-OpenAI partnership for iOS 18.

One key thing that caught my interest in the full event video was a forthcoming ChatGPT app feature that was demoed but without any real details shared. What feature? The ability for ChatGPT to see everything happening on your device’s screen.

Last week at its iPad event, Apple demoed the future of Logic Pro when it previewed Logic Pro 2 for iPad. The new update leans heavily into AI-driven features, including powerful automatic stem-splitting and the ability to record a fully AI-built band.

These Logic Pro updates are now available on both iPad and Mac. Here are the details.

Today OpenAI held a spring update event, where it outlined some of its latest work on the ChatGPT platform. One key announcement was the arrival of a new Mac desktop app, but the larger focus was on a new flagship model of ChatGPT. This new model, GPT-4o, arrives just in time for a rumored deep integration into iOS 18 at WWDC.

Coordinating teams and in-office days in our new normal of hybrid work is a difficult task, and one that carries a lot of untapped potential for productivity tools. Today Microsoft announced the public preview launch of Places, a new app a couple years in the making that aims to use AI to assist teams in syncing their in-office time.

Coming on the heels of a Wall Street Journal report that Apple was developing its own chips geared toward powering AI-focused data centers, today Mark Gurman at Bloomberg effectively confirmed the report while adding new details of his own.

The accessibility of AI is on the rise, and with it, content platforms now have to grapple with how to handle the potential issues AI can introduce.

A new report indicates that TikTok is about to ramp up its efforts in AI transparency. It will do this by automatically labeling all AI-generated content. Or at least, the content it knows about.

Update: It turns out Tim Cook was misunderstood in the CNBC story. The full quote in context does not imply an AI software announcement at next week’s hardware event, although Apple does infuse its silicon with AI readiness. Here’s the full quote in context:



”Looking ahead, we’re getting ready for an exciting product announcement next week that we think our customers will love. And next month, we have our Worldwide Developers Conference, which has generated enormous enthusiasm from our developers. We can’t wait to reveal what we have in store.

”

Additionally, with a pause inserted to explain what happened:

“And we’re getting into a period of time here where we’re extremely excited like I’m in the edge of my seat literally because next week, we’ve got a product event that we’re excited about. And then just a few weeks thereafter, we’ve got the developers Worldwide Developers Conference coming up and we’ve got some big plans to announce in in both of these events. [pause] From an AI point of view…”

Apple is still expected to unveil its AI software innovations in June during its Worldwide Developers Conference.