Here are all the AI features that Apple showed yesterday
These AI features came alongside new iPads from Apple, and give us a taste of what's to come from the tech giant later this year.
Apple’s May “Let Loose” launch event saw big new additions to the iPad line-up. New M4 chips promise exceptional performance and OLED has finally arrived on Apple tablet hardware. Software upgrades weren’t ignored, though; Apple also rolled out some new AI-powered features for its new slates. They’re a sneaky first glimpse at what’s to come from the tech giant later this year.
Audio creation app Logic Pro 2 has been built to use the M4 chip’s neural engine, with the new Session Players feature giving you extra instrument options. If you don’t have the original stems (the individual parts of a song), the app will now analyse and extract the voice, bass, drums, and other instruments to give you a starting point to remix.
The ChromaGlow feature then models sounds produced by some of the world’s most revered studio hardware. You can work on the perfect tone with five different saturation styles to add more realistic warmth, presence, and punch to any track. You can also choose from modern, nostalgic, vintage, or more extreme styles, which shape and mould the mix using AI algorithms.
Video editor Final Cut Pro 2 will harness AI to isolate subjects in your clips. Apple also said it could accelerate real-time Live Captions, but it’s unclear if that’s specific to Final Cut Pro or will be system-wide. Elsewhere, Final Cut Pro 2 gets a Live Multicam feature that can connect and preview up to four cameras at once, using the new Final Cut Camera app on your other iPhones or Pads. You can also now edit footage from external devices plugged into your iPad.
The new M4 chipset is apparently 50% faster than the M2 processor at AI-accelerated tasks. It’s able to process 38 trillion operators per second (TOPS), or the same performance as the latest PC silicon – except while drawing a quarter of the power.
Those might sound like minor AI additions compared to the likes of Samsung, Microsoft and Google, who are all-in on AI at this point. But Apple seems to be setting the stage for a grander AI reveal at the upcoming WWDC 2024 developer conference. The tech giant has already published a number of AI models which can run locally on your iPhone, and has signalled plans to release some big AI-powered features. In addition to new features, a revamped Siri is almost certainly on the cards.
Connor Jewiss
