Apple Explains: Why Does Apple Intelligence Only Work on New iPhones?

Apple has provided further details on why the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform only works on more powerful devices. This was one of the public criticisms of the revelation. Apple Intelligence During the opening of WWDC 2024.

The person who explained the technical part of the operations was the head of Apple’s artificial intelligence and machine learning department. John GiannandreaIn an interview with journalist Jeff Gruber on the Live Talk Show from WWDC 2024. Basically, language models running on the device demand a lot from the device and need certain prerequisites to run.

According to him, it would even be possible to place the platform on older models, but this would compromise the experience. “Theoretically you could run models on a very old device, but that would be so slow it wouldn’t even be useful,” he explains.

How Apple Intelligence works secretly

As Giannandrea explains: Apple Intelligence runs multiple language models simultaneouslyIt is activated only at the time of use, depending on the function desired by the user.

This is a process known as inference. In the case of large-scale language models, “Incredibly expensive from a computational perspective”.

“It’s a combination of the bandwidth size in the device, the size of Apple’s neural engine, and the energy in the device to run these models really fast,” the executive elaborates.

In addition to the answer, Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak suggested: the company could further limit the number of compatible devices With Apple Intelligence if the prerequisites are just a marketing tactic.

When it comes to smartphones the platform is currently only iPhone 15 Pro This iPhone 15 Pro Max. These are the company’s most powerful current models, featuring the A17 Pro processor and 8GB of RAM, which is vastly superior to its predecessor, the traditional iPhone 15 model.

When it comes to Macs and iPads, the minimum requirement is that the device runs on an M1 processor. The launch of Apple Intelligence will take place alongside the release of iOS 18, with the stable version expected to arrive in September this year.