Apple’s New “Apple Intelligence” and Its Impact on the Legal Profession
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Apple has made a significant leap into the realm of generative artificial intelligence with its “Apple Intelligence” announced today. This systemwide update, unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference, marks a pivotal moment for Apple as it integrates advanced AI capabilities into its devices. Notably, Apple is leveraging the expertise of OpenAI to power these new AI functionalities. It won’t be available in beta until the fall.
Key Features of Apple Intelligence
Personalized AI Assistance: Apple Intelligence aims to deliver a highly personalized AI experience. It will retrieve and process information from across apps and personal data to assist users with tasks such as proofreading texts, calling up specific photographs, and gauging traffic patterns.
Enhanced Siri and Natural Language Processing: Siri has been upgraded to better understand natural language and context. I’m hoping that it can now better understand what I’m saying instead of coming up with crazy word patterns for my texts.
Privacy-Centric AI Processing: Apple is maintaining its commitment to privacy by processing most AI tasks directly on the device. For larger AI models, it will use its Private Cloud Compute to ensure data is only sent when necessary and not stored or accessed by Apple for further training. This is great, but it would be much more meaningful if we didn’t do most of our lawyering on laptops and desktops.
Advanced AI Features Across Devices: The update includes features such as handwriting recognition on iPads (which I might dust off my Apple Pencil for), web content summarization in Safari, and the ability to convert sketches into polished diagrams. These features highlight Apple’s dedication to integrating AI seamlessly into its ecosystem.
Market Impact and Innovation Drive: This move is intended to reinvigorate Apple’s market presence amidst strong competition from Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia (a company that builds chips powerful enough to run AI). By showcasing progress in AI, Apple aims to boost investor confidence and potentially drive new revenue streams through AI-powered services and subscriptions. The caveat to this hopeful market impact is that OpenAI is already heavily partnered with Microsoft. This might do more to boost confidence in OpenAI, since it will now back AI for both Apple and Microsoft.
Implications for the Legal Profession
While the advancements in Apple Intelligence are impressive, their immediate impact on the legal profession will be limited. Lawyers typically rely on more robust, specialized tools for legal research, document management, and case analysis—tasks that are not commonly performed on mobile devices.
Legal professionals often require laptop or desktop environments with specialized software for “heavy-duty lawyering.” And I, like most lawyers, use MicrosoftTherefore, while the enhancements in Siri and other AI features might offer some conveniences, they are unlikely to revolutionize the day-to-day operations of most legal practitioners.
As a dedicated Apple user, my hope is that these developments will enhance my personal productivity even if they won’t be transforming my core legal workflows.
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