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Apple has unveiled its first round of generative AI tools, and in typical Apple fashion, it’s taken complete ownership of it, calling it ‘Apple Intelligence’.
At the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, the tech giant announced a suite of new tools coming to the iPhone, iPad and Mac, including its own version of Google’s magic eraser called a ‘clean up tool’ to remove people or objects from the background of your pictures.
There’s also generative emojis, that let you create your own icons and Siri improvements using Apple’s own large-language model, that will make it more natural, and improve its understanding of context.
Plus Siri will be able to draw on information and use the capabilities of ChatGPT, thanks to a new partnership, but not everyone is happy about that.
Elon Musk has said he would ban Apple devices from his companies over the tech giant’s deal to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
The Tesla boss said the decision was an “unacceptable security violation” and accused Apple of handing over user data to OpenAI, the firm behind the chatbot.
In its announcement of the partnership, Apple said users needed to give their permission before any request was shared with OpenAI and that requests were not stored during the process.
Mr Musk has a fractious relationship with OpenAI – he was a founder of the company, but has since turned against it and accused it of failing to follow its founding principles.
Scientists at Cambridge University who created “mini-guts” in the lab to help understand Crohn’s disease, have identified DNA changes that may play an important role in the condition.
Professor Matthias Zilbauer worked on the research, which saw them grow what are called organoids, from the gut tissue of young patients.
He told Tech & Science Daily that by using these mini guts, they found that ‘switches’ which modify DNA in gut cells, play an important role in the disease and how it presents in patients.
It’s hoped in the future scientists will be able to offer personalised treatments for each patient, by taking their gut tissue, growing these ‘mini guts’ in the lab, and testing to see which drugs work.
Also in this episode:
Social media scammers impersonating ‘every major airline operating in the UK’ - Which?
Morning frost detected on volcanoes near Mars’s equator
New Glastonbury app helps friends find each other – and their tent – more easily
How researchers used AI to find elephant “names.”
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Here’s an automated transcript:
Hi, I'm Jon Weeks, and this is The Standard's Tech and Science Daily podcast.
Coming up, scientists grow mini-guts to study Crohn's disease.
But first, Apple has unveiled its first round of generative AI tools, and in typical Apple fashion, it's taken complete ownership of it.
The tech giant's calling it Apple Intelligence, a suite of new tools coming to the iPhone, iPad, and Macs.
Apple Intelligence will enable your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to understand and create language as well as images and take action for you to simplify interactions across your apps.
At a worldwide developers' conference yesterday, Apple announced its own version of Google's magic eraser called a Cleanup Tool to remove people or things from the background of your pictures.
There's also generative emojis that let you create your own icons based on how you're feeling.
The example at the WWDC event was T-Rex wearing a tutu on a surfboard.
On the iPad, they finally introduced an official calculator app, but with a twist.
The app has something called Math Notes, which lets you literally write down equations with the Apple Pencil, and the app will give you the answer in your handwriting and will adjust the answer as you change the equation.
Plus, there are Siri improvements.
Using Apple's own large language model, that will make it more natural and improve its understanding of context.
There are various other features like phone call and web page summaries, and you'll be able to ask it to perform specific actions inside apps.
So you can say things like, pull up the files that Jaws shared with me last week, or show me all the photos of Mom, Olivia and me, or play the podcast that my wife sent the other day.
Plus, Siri will be able to draw on information and to use the capabilities of ChatGPT thanks to a new partnership.
But not everyone is happy about that.
Elon Musk has said he would ban Apple devices from his companies over the tech giant's deal to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
The Tesla boss said the decision was an unacceptable security violation and accused Apple of handing over user data to OpenAI, the firm behind the Chatbot.
In its announcement of the partnership, Apple said users needed to give their permission before any request was shared with OpenAI and that requests were not stored during the process.
Mr Musk has a fractious relationship with OpenAI.
He was a founder of the company, but has since turned against it and accused it of failing to follow its founding principles.
Scientists at Cambridge University, who created mini-guts in the lab to help understand Crohn's disease, have identified DNA changes that may play an important role in the condition.
The real excitement came when we figured out that the organoids in which we saw the most dramatic changes, they came from patients that tend to have a more severe disease.
So this is sort of the final, if you wish, confirmation that these mechanisms seem to be truly important.
Professor Matthias Zilbauer worked on the research, which saw them grow what are called organoids from the gut tissue of young patients.
He told us that using these mini-guts, they found that switches which modify DNA in gut cells play an important role in the disease and how it presents in patients.
We found that these changes occur in a subset of patients with Crohn's disease, which is really important because it could explain why not every patient with Crohn's disease has the same disease.
In fact, almost every patient has a unique disease and they differ in terms of severity, outcome, whether they do or don't respond to treatment, whether they ultimately need surgery or not.
He told us that these switches or DNA modifications are built in to the body, which could explain why Crohn's patients suffer with the disease all their lives.
Even in patients that enter remission, these modifications don't change.
They don't, you know, normalise.
And again, this is extremely important because it could explain why the disease comes back.
And it comes back in almost all patients sooner or later.
It's hoped that in the future, scientists will be able to offer personalised treatments for each patient by taking their gut tissue, growing these mini-guts in the lab and testing to see which drugs actually work.
Crohn's disease is a nasty, complex disease and we haven't really made major progress in decades.
And I believe the only way forward is together with the patients.
And I think this is an example where when we work together with the support of our patients, we can really make some real changes.
Analysis by consumer group Which? has found that social media scammers are impersonating every major airline operating in the UK.
They said fraudsters on X, formerly Twitter, are responding to messages sent to official accounts.
Scammers have been impersonating airlines to ask for enough information to enable them to commit identity fraud, Which? said one of its researchers, who posted a message to the official account for Wizz Air to ask if a flight was delayed, received responses from two fake accounts almost immediately.
Wizz Air said they've seen a rise in fake accounts on X and they report as many unofficial accounts as possible.
An EasyJet spokesperson said they also continue to report fake accounts to X and advise customers to only follow and engage with their sole official channel at EasyJet.
Coming up, the new Glastonbury app that helps you find your friends and how AI is being used to work out elephants' names...
Welcome back, on Mars, morning frost has been detected on volcanoes near the Red Planet equator, where it was thought impossible for water frost to exist.
The discovery confirms that ice is not just confined to the poles and indicates that water ice is far more abundant across the planet than previously realized.
The frost was found on top of the Tharsis volcanoes, the tallest not only on Mars, but across the solar system.
It was spotted by two European space agency satellites and Colin Wilson, an ESA project scientist, said finding water on the surface of Mars is always exciting, both for scientific interests and for its implications for human and robotic exploration.
Now, there's a new app for people going to Glastonbury this year that helps you find your friends when you get lost.
It has a map feature that lets users drop pins on locations for things like their tent, where they parked their car, and to set meeting points to regroup with friends.
The festival's app also has new directional navigation to help fans move between stages more easily, plus the ability to filter the map for specific food stalls, shops, and official merch stands.
And finally, researchers from Colorado State University have been using AI to try and work out the names of elephants in their native language.
Research published in Nature, Ecology and Evolution shows how they used machine learning to try to find a name-like component in the rumbles of elephants.
Their evidence suggests that wild African elephants do address one another with individually specific calls, AKA names.
The AI model managed to identify which elephant was being addressed 27.5% of the time, and the researchers found they could use those calls to get a reaction from that elephant.
You're up to date.
We're back tomorrow afternoon at one.
See you then.
