Apple Intelligence Tools Aim at Making Siri and Shopping Smarter | PYMNTS.com

Apple’s launch of its artificial intelligence features on Monday (Oct. 28) marks more than just an upgrade to Siri. Industry experts say it could reshape how we shop online and in stores while challenging the notion that the tech giant has fallen behind in the AI race.

“Apple may be late to the AI surge compared to Google and Amazon, which have been adding AI to products for years,” Steven Athwal, CEO of The Big Phone Store, told PYMNTS. “But Apple has always been about timing and refinement. While others rushed to put out the latest in AI tech, Apple focused on privacy, security, and user experience.”

The new features, dubbed Apple Intelligence, arrive through a software update that works on recent iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It’s the company’s most significant push yet into AI — and notably includes integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, marking an unusual departure from Apple’s typically closed ecosystem.

The new system can summarize long email threads, prioritize urgent messages like same-day invitations and boarding passes, transcribe and summarize phone calls and voice recordings, and perform natural language searches of photos and videos to find specific moments or objects. A new “Clean Up” tool removes unwanted elements from photos while attempting to maintain the image’s original composition. 

Apple’s new Writing Tools feature, integrated across its operating systems, lets users rewrite, proofread, and summarize text in any app with options to adjust tone and style from formal business language to friendly casual writing. The AI features require newer devices with Apple’s latest processors – specifically iPhone 15 Pro and later models, iPads with A17 Pro or M1 chips and later, and Macs with M1 chips or newer.

Retail Impact

The potential impact of Apple Intelligence on retail has caught the attention of industry watchers.

“Apple isn’t just upgrading Siri — it’s redefining the retail experience,” Kaveh Vahdat, founder of AI marketing firm RiseOpp, told PYMNTS. “Imagine AI-powered shopping where Siri becomes a real-time stylist, inventory checker, and payment assistant, all wrapped in Apple’s signature privacy shield.”

Picture walking into an Apple Store, Vahdat said, and having your iPhone instantly alert you to personalized offers or check if that MacBook you’ve been eyeing is in stock. “This could transform Apple’s retail strategy from reactive to predictive, placing the iPhone as the personal shopping assistant of the future.”

The App Store, Apple’s digital marketplace, could see similar changes. Gone would be the endless scrolling through apps. Instead, Vahdat said, “Siri could act as a concierge, curating recommendations based on user context, past downloads, or real-time needs. This would make the App Store feel less like an overwhelming digital marketplace and more like a personal assistant.”

The most significant changes might come to Apple Pay, the company’s mobile payment system. “Imagine an iPhone that knows you’ve entered your favorite store, highlights items on your wish list, and lets you complete a purchase with a nod to your payment history and budget—all with Apple’s tight privacy controls intact,” Vahdat said.

Those privacy controls are central to Apple’s strategy. Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, emphasized a “groundbreaking new approach that extends the privacy and security of iPhone into the cloud to protect users’ information.”

The focus on security extends to fraud prevention. “It’s possible that Apple may integrate AI to analyze transaction patterns made using things like FaceID,” Athwal noted. “By doing so, they may be able to flag unusual or fraudulent activity.”

Chat Coming Soon

The features will roll out in phases, starting with U.S. English support and expanding to other markets later. The ChatGPT integration arrives in December, letting users access the AI service without creating an account — potentially introducing millions of Apple users to generative AI for the first time.

Apple’s move comes as tech giants race to integrate AI into their products. However, while others rushed to market, Apple took its time. The question is whether that patience will pay off in transforming how customers shop online.

“This could make mobile checkout faster, more intuitive, and likely a model for the entire industry to follow,” Vahdat said. But first, Apple needs to prove its AI features work as seamlessly as promised — and that consumers are ready to let artificial intelligence guide their shopping decisions.

For now, the features are limited to newer devices like the iPhone 15 Pro, creating potential incentives for hardware upgrades. Additional features are promised for December and throughout 2024.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.