Report: Apple Intelligence to open up to developers at WWDC

How much would your company pay for a focused AI system built by your own experts, one that brings in the best of all available genAI systems within an integration that works via iCloud Private Compute and Apple Intelligence?

I ask this because, if you stretch your neck and use your imagination just a little bit, you can just about see signs that suggest Apple has a chance to build a system like this. It just needs to loosen up its approach to third-party AI development, make its own APIs more widely available to external developers, and create a highly secure cloud-based system with which to handle complex requests.

Apple has at least one of those components already — and may soon have two more.

Apple to introduce Apple Intelligence SDK at WWDC?

That’s one way to look at the most recent news to emanate from behind the doors of Cupertino via the man who seems to have become (at least to some factions in Apple’s inner circle) Apple’s Chief Rumors Officer (CRO), Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. He says Apple intends to open up access to its own Apple Intelligence APIs at WWDC next month, making it possible for developers to integrate the AI systems it has built into their own applications. 

The company is expected to announce a new software development kit (SDK) in iOS 19 that will make it easier for app developers to add Apple Intelligence features such as Writing Tools or Genmoji to their software. (Gurman’s story says that Apple will at first give developers access to smaller AI tools that can run on the device.) 

Developers can already integrate some Apple Intelligence features into their apps, but this SDK would permit them to create new AI features using Apple’s own AI frameworks. At present, they must use third-party models to accomplish this. 

What about Private Cloud Compute?

The thing is, once you recognize that some iOS applications are themselves front doors to other vendors’ genAI systems, the move may give Apple a double whammy — a chance to offer its highly secure AI solutions via the apps people choose to use, along with a route through which to provide additional solutions for use within those apps, potentially extending to access of some kind to its Private Cloud Compute systems. 

The latter is a big deal. It means AI developers may be able to find some way to offer up their own solutions to Apple users, making them available via the privacy shield Private Cloud Compute provides. 

What that means is the convenience of AI along with the privacy and security Apple provides. 

Take that a couple of steps further down this particular episode of Pure Apple Speculation, and you can see that enterprise users might be pretty excited about that. It matters to business users in regulated industries who want to be able to use powerful AI services but do not want to leave their data at potential risk. 

Steps on the journey

I’m not saying Apple will be able to introduce anything quite like this at WWDC. 

In recent months, stories emerging from inside Apple’s AI teams suggest things are far too chaotic and stressful for such a plan to be put in place. However, I do think that with the addition of an Apple Intelligence SDK and the steady deployment of Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers, the opportunity to work in closer partnership with third-party AI developers exists. (Don’t ignore those servers — Apple is, after all, working with huge manufacturers to produce them in quantity, which implies it expects to see them being widely used.)

It may not be the easiest opportunity for Apple to embrace culturally and would to some extent signify how far behind Apple has fallen in some respects, but it will be a smart way to maintain hardware and software relevance and provide unique services to its customers. Working with others, Apple may be able to deliver a best-in-class AI you can safely use, privately and securely, without the data leaks. That’s an answer to a question that has slowed AI adoption. 

While you have to be very wary when any Big Tech firm promises privacy (as Siri once showed us), and don’t want to find out subsequently that all of this was no more than a velvet glove treatment to gently usher us into a ghastly automated dystopia, there is a need for private AI. Educators, health services, and businesspeople particularly need it, and by working in a positive and constructive way with third-party AI developers, Apple may now have a strategically functional way in which to deliver it.

We shall see.

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