Apple announced its foray into the world of artificial intelligence with the launch of Apple Intelligence at its WWDC 2024 event earlier this month. Apple Intelligence comes with a host of nifty features, including an improved Siri interface that allows for longer conversations, a revamped Photos app, integration with ChatGPT, the ability to generate images and emojis, and more.
Most of the new AI features are unlikely to arrive this year, and if they do, they'll be limited to the iPhone 15 Pro and newer models, meaning even the latest iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus won't get the new AI features.
Apple is reportedly developing a much more powerful chipset for the iPhone 16 series, which is expected to support new AI features across all four models. However, the removal of the standard iPhone 15 model from the list of supported devices for Apple Intelligence has many users wondering whether this is a ploy by Apple to generate more buzz for the iPhone 16 and boost sales, or whether the iPhone 15 Plus and earlier models are actually unable to handle these complex tasks.
Apple explains why older iPhones don't support Apple Intelligence:
Thankfully, some much-needed clarity has emerged as to why Apple didn't bring these AI features to older iPhones. In a conversation with John Gruber on the Daring Fireball podcast, John Giannandrea (Apple's vice president of machine learning and AI strategy) revealed that while the AI models that power Apple Intelligence could theoretically run on very old devices, they would be too slow to be of any use at all.
“Inference on large language models is very computationally expensive. In theory, it's possible to run these models on very old devices, but they'll be so slow that it won't be useful,” Giannandrea said.
Gruber then asked fellow Apple executives on the panel, Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak, whether the restrictions were a “ploy to sell new iPhones,” an allegation Joswiak responded by saying that if that was the case, Apple would have been “smart enough” to restrict the new AI features to just the newly released iPads and Macs.
Federighi, meanwhile, addressed the issue head-on, saying, “The first thing we have to do is figure out how to bring back as much functionality as we can. It would be absolutely amazing to have this model of power running on an iPhone, and that's what led to us building this iPhone.”
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