Every year, Apple and Google roll out major software updates that bring new features to their smartphones, like revamped home screen looks, better privacy protections, fun messaging tools, etc. This year, the changes are expected to be more dramatic, as both companies focus on modernizing their phones with artificial intelligence.
At its annual Software Developers Conference on Monday, Apple unveiled a slew of enhancements coming this fall to iOS 18, the operating system that powers iPhones. New tools include an improved version of its voice assistant, Siri, that's easier to talk to, and an AI system that can generate images, write summaries of web articles and compose replies to text messages and emails.
Apple's news follows Google's Android announcement last month that includes an AI system that can automatically summarize voice recordings, detect potential scams in phone conversations and help students with their homework.
The AI ​​technology is still new, so it's unclear whether these improvements will be embraced by the general public. The more immediate change concerns old-fashioned texting, also known as green bubbles. Apple said the new software will adopt messaging standards that will allow iPhone users to send higher-quality messages to Android phones, addressing a problem that has made it difficult for people to communicate for more than a decade.
Apple and Google will be releasing free software updates for iOS and Android this fall. Here's what you need to know about how they'll change your smartphone.
AI brain transplant realized for Siri
Apple has announced that it has completely revamped Siri, its virtual assistant that debuted 13 years ago.
The Assistant will soon be powered by Apple Intelligence, the company's version of a “large-scale language model.” This type of AI technology uses statistics and complex algorithms to guess which words are relevant. It's similar to the autocomplete feature on your phone. It's the same type of underlying technology that powers chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. Apple said its system is more privacy-friendly than others because user data stays on the iPhone.
The upgrade allows Siri to handle conversational context, allowing users to speak more naturally to the virtual assistant, for example, “What's the weather like in Santa Cruz? Oh, wait, I meant San Francisco,” and then later say, “Schedule a coffee meeting there tomorrow at 9 a.m.”
Apple says the new, more capable Siri will be able to handle more complex tasks, like finding a picture of your driver's license in your photo album or grabbing an ID number to paste into a form.
In contrast, the older version of Siri could only respond to a database of commands and questions that it was programmed to understand, such as “What's the weather like in San Francisco?” or “Schedule a coffee meeting in San Francisco.”
According to Apple, Apple Intelligence also allows iPhone users to automatically generate images in messages. For example, if you're celebrating a friend's birthday, the AI ​​can check your photo album for an image of that person and then generate an avatar of that person complete with balloons.
AI is also available in writing apps like Mail and Notes, where users can highlight text to proofread or rewrite it in a different style. Within the Safari web browser, users can also highlight articles and generate a short summary.
Apple announced that it has partnered with OpenAI to enable Siri to use ChatGPT to assist with tasks such as creating a list of recipe ideas.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner Microsoft for copyright infringement of news content related to its AI systems.)
The AI ​​features will be coming only to the latest and fastest iPhones this fall, including the iPhone 15 Pro.
Google overhauls Android with “Gemini”
Most of Google's latest AI features will only be available to owners of Google's Pixel phones, with support for other Android devices coming later this year.
For the past year, Google has had users test Gemini, its new AI assistant that requires an app download. (Android phones still come with Google Assistant by default, a virtual assistant similar to Amazon's Alexa and the older version of Siri.) Like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Gemini works like a chatbot, generating responses to any prompt you throw at it, such as “Write a poem about dogs in San Francisco.”
The new version of Gemini, called Nano, will focus on processing AI tasks directly on Pixel phones, rather than processing requests on Google's servers for privacy reasons.
One of the fraud detection features uses AI to listen to phone conversations and sends an alert to your phone if the conversation fits a fraudulent pattern, such as a scammer asking for your online banking password.
Another feature, “Circle to Search,” lets users circle an image to ask Google for information. The feature is now being expanded so students can circle a math or physics problem to ask for help, and Google's AI will generate a list of steps to solve the problem.
The Gemini Nano can also pull in automatically generated transcripts from audio recordings to create useful written summaries of meetings. Another tool, Magic Compose, can be used within Google's Messages app to quickly rewrite a message in a different style.
Text messaging improvements
For over a decade, smartphone users around the world have been faced with a green and blue bubble divide. When an iPhone user sends a text to another iPhone, the message appears in blue and they get special perks like fun emojis and animations. But when an iPhone user sends a text to an Android user, the bubble turns green, many features break, and photo and video quality suffers.
Apple has finally taken a step towards bridging that gap: With iOS 18, the company announced that its Messages app will adopt Rich Communication Services, a standard that Google and others integrated into their apps years ago. Texts sent between iPhones and Androids will remain green, but images and videos will be of higher quality.
The consequences could be big: Many iPhone and Android users say poor image quality has put them off messaging each other. The Justice Department, which earlier this year accused Apple of placing restrictions on its phones to maintain its monopoly, saw the messaging incompatibility as a pressure tactic to get people to buy iPhones.
Apple also said it would add a long-awaited feature to its iMessage app: the ability to schedule messages to be sent later, which could help iPhone users respect each other's boundaries by, for example, scheduling messages to be sent when the recipient is off work.
