Apple Intelligence is on its way, but not all Apple owners, or even the top-of-the-line iPhones can have it.
Apple has been using AI on its devices for a long time, but it doesn't follow the trend that much. Just when others, including tech titans, are competing in the development of generative AI, thanks to OpenAI that started the trend following the announcement of ChatGPT, Apple has been lagging in the race.
When others have gone leaps ahead, in terms of Large Language Model AI products, Apple was still sticking to its voice assistant Siri.
But during its 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), things changed.
Apple announces 'Apple Intelligence' technology across its suite of apps, which should significantly improve not only Siri, but pretty much everything else.
But then things fall short.
Not everyone can use this feature, and there is a reason for that.
Read: Apple's Foray Into Generative AI Is With 'MGIE' Where Users Can Edit Images Using Words
In the nearly two-hour long presentation at the Apple's annual developer conference, executives CEO Tim Cook touted how Siri would be able to interact with messages, emails, calendar, as well as third party apps.
He asserted that AI-powered devices should "empower you to be able to do things you couldn’t do otherwise."
"I do believe that as things get smarter and smarter with Apple intelligence, that you can even take things that were taking more time will take less time now. I do think that opportunity exists."
But to make that happen, and make things private, a cutoff is needed.
Here, Apple Intelligence can only run on Apple devices that are powered by at least an A17 Pro processor, or M-series chip.
What this means, the AI can only be made available on:
- The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, or newer.
- iPad with an M1 chip or later.
- Apple Silicon Macs with M1 or later.
Apple devices that don't meet the above criteria, cannot run Apple Intelligence.
In an interview with John Gruber's podcast "The Talk Show" after Apple's WWDC, Apple's head of AI strategy and machine learning, John Giannandrea, explained:
"So it's a combination of bandwidth in the device, it's the size of the ANE, it's the oomph in the device to actually do these models fast enough to be useful."
According to Giannandrea, Apple's A17 chip is ideal for running Apple Intelligence, in part because its ANE (Apple Neural Engine).
What's more, newer devices also have more RAM, or memory, which is also key to running on-device generative AI features.
AI tools that need to run locally, require a lot of memory, and older Apple devices are more limited in its capacity.
While the AI model could theoretically run on older devices, it would be "so slow, it would not be useful," Giannandrea explained.
Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that the company's first move with any new feature, is to work out how to bring it back to older devices as far as possible. But when it comes to Apple Intelligence, "This is the hardware that it takes... It's a pretty extraordinary thing to run models of this power on an iPhone," he added.
While Apple said the cutoff for Apple Intelligence is not intended to boost sales, the decision could indeed incentivize consumers into upgrading their device.