The early report is that Apple is using AI to put totally random AI-generated emoji into your chats and people will love it because this is Apple, the company that brought you those animated emojis that you never use anymore and the company that made personas so you can video chat as a character out of the Polar Express. Of course, there is so much more to Apple's future artificial intelligence plans than the ability to make an emoji that is whatever that is. In this video, I'm going to go over the rumors of the new AI tools that Apple is expected to show off at WWDC, its big developers conference, on June 10th. But when you hear about these reported

AI features coming this year, there's one more twist to this news that fascinates me, beyond food animals. I am seeing hope that Apple could set itself apart from all the other AI criticism and controversy that's happening now in tech, but it seems Apple might not be totally clear of drama.

I'm Bridget Carey and this is one more thing. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently told shareholders that the company is putting tremendous time and effort into integrating AI into its products and making a significant investment into generative AI. We are expected to hear a lot about that at WWDC when Apple tells us what's next in operating system software.

Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman got the tech circles buzzing this week with his latest report on what AI could be coming to iOS 18 and macOS 15. We could see AI help edit photos or send messages or reply to email. AI could help summarize long messages, transcribe voice messages. It might even summarize something you come across browsing on Safari. Search could be smarter and Siri could speak more conversationally. Now, a lot of these things wouldn't be all that surprising, but I want to go over three AI tools in this report that stood out to me. You may have already seen tools that can mash up emoji icons into ridiculous symbols. I've talked about it before on this show with sites like Emoji Kitchen, and it seems like Apple might launch its own version of this in iOS 18.

Bloomberg says the iPhone might be able to create an emoji for you on the fly, something outside of the standard emoji library that is set by the Unicode Consortium. Apple knows how to have some fun with messaging. It's right out of Apple's playbook to give folks something silly to talk about in a software update. When Apple does a weird cartoony thing, that's the feature that always gets all the attention in the news. When Vision Pro came out, we all gawked at the personas.

The TrueDepth front-facing camera in the iPhone became more fun to show off with animated emoji faces in chat. And when Apple announced slow motion on the front-facing camera, well, it's more exciting if you call it a slofie. Yeah, that didn't catch on. But I am being serious when I say I think

Apple's really smart with this idea to give people a light-hearted playground for AI image generation.

We are in a time where we're filled with stories of how AI systems are ethically questionable and making terrible goofs. The other week, Google set its Gemini AI free on search, and folks poked fun at the weird results it was giving. Gemini would pull up jokes from Reddit and The Onion and spew out these answers as facts, telling people that eating rocks is good for you and recommending people put glue in their pizza. That same week, movie star Scarlett Johansson publicly criticized open AI. She got her lawyers involved over the lack of transparency about where chat GPT's voice came from because it sounded eerily like her own voice after she denied the company the rights to use her voice for this flirtatious chat bot. The voice has since been removed. With emoji creation, Apple could focus on something more light-hearted to get customers interested in using AI to create something funny and dodge controversy. I mean, assuming people don't make something terrible with the emojis, let's not go crazy with the eggplants, people. I'm sure everyone will be watching to see how the Siri personal assistant is going to get an upgrade in how it understands our commands. The Bloomberg report mentioned that a more advanced Siri would not only be coming to the iPhone, but also the Apple Watch for on-the-go tasks. Now, just having a less glitchy Siri would be a huge step up for me, but if that assistant worked really well on the watch, that is exactly where Apple can stand apart.

If Apple has a useful AI helper on a wearable, it would do what other companies have been trying and failing to do by making an AI companion that can go anywhere without needing the phone.

About a month ago, we saw the launch of the AI-Pen. It's a $700 AI computer that you can wear on a shirt, but it was blasted in early reviews for being a buggy device that couldn't fulfill its promises. Humane, the startup behind the AI-Pen, is now reportedly trying to sell itself for as much as $1 billion. Last month also was the launch of another tiny AI handheld gadget called the Rabbit R1, and it also tried to be this AI assistant that you could take anywhere and answer your questions, but it didn't answer much, and it left tech reviewers disappointed.

If Apple brings an AI-savvy Siri to the Apple Watch, then it will show all these other companies how a real AI voice assistant can be helpful while worn on the go. But that does feel like a big if.

Maybe we will see a small step in that direction. Other companies are dabbling now with putting AI on watches as a health or workout assistant. The AmazeFit Cheetah has an AI running coach of sorts, and Google's Fitbit Labs is launching a new program that uses generative AI to answer questions and provide more context about your activity data. And the idea there is that the

AI could be used to help you set realistic fitness goals. A year ago, Bloomberg reported that Apple was working on some sort of AI-powered health coaching service, but who knows how close we are to that launching. Apple took some baby steps with putting more powerful chips in the latest watch models, and that meant Siri requests are processed on the device faster and more secure instead of having data be processed in the cloud. The latest watches let you ask Siri about your health data or log information about your health, and it's all just private on the device. That brings me to another area where Apple could really stand apart from everyone else. Privacy!

Just like the watches, you can imagine Apple will be talking about how its new AI chips can make the iPhone do AI tasks that stay on the device. Like that old ad, what happens on the iPhone stays on the iPhone. Bloomberg is reporting that much of the processing for Apple's AI on the new iOS and macOS would run entirely on the device. But there is a twist that worries me just a little. It's also being reported that if a feature of the AI requires more horsepower, the work is going to be pushed to the cloud to data centers powered by Apple's

M2 Ultra chips. So Apple will really need to talk about how our data is being protected, and we're going to need to get examples of which tasks are going to be calculated in the cloud.

What is being sacrificed here? A report in the Information is saying that Apple might protect cloud data in some sort of virtual black box. We'll have to wait and see. It's reported that

Apple's AI system will be able to summarize our private notifications, our text messages, the sites we visit, the media we consume. So privacy is going to be a big deal in this quickly evolving AI landscape. There are many questions on what data these AI companies are slurping up to train their systems, and what we're giving away to feed these beasts. There are two other rumored announcements that could come with some drama that Apple might not be able to save itself from, just with a silly emoji. The same reports are saying that Apple is going to announce that it partnered with OpenAI somehow. I don't know how Apple is going to walk this line of promoting a safe, private environment, but also boasting that, hey, it invited the troublemaker into the backyard to play in our sandbox. You trust Apple, so does that mean we also have to trust Apple's friends?

The other concern here comes from a rumor regarding the Safari browser, something possibly called

Web Eraser. This is reported by Apple Insider, and it says you might just be able to take out any element of a website, like an advertisement. And Business Insider is on top of that, reporting that a group of French publishers and advertisers are asking Tim Cook to halt this tool, don't show it at WWDC, because it could harm publishers that rely on advertising for their business.

It's not even out yet, and there's already a signed letter against it, so we will have to see what that's all about. So how does Apple dance around all of this drama? Easy, it'll just tell everyone that this is beta. That's what Bloomberg is reporting, that Apple would likely call its AI features beta, or say something about how it's still being tested. Where other tech companies are rushing in and exuding confidence and falling on their faces when their product messes up,

Apple could just slap a beta label on it. Oh sure, every single iPhone customer will be out there trying it, but hey, you can't get mad at Apple if it's wonky and falls apart on you, or misses a fact in a summary, or skipped a word in a transcription, or causes your website to fail because you can't make money anymore. Apple put up the under construction sign. It's like being confidently unconfident. But even with a beta label, there's one slip-up that people won't forgive, a privacy slip-up. I am hopeful that Apple will be smart in how it releases its AI. Sometimes you hear folks poke at Apple for not being first, but this time I am good with a company taking its time to be level-headed. And WWDC is a chance for Apple to also take a different tone than the competition.

I want to see how Apple's software smarts help humanity level up by saving time and enhancing our abilities. In a sea of giggling chatbots and search engines that try to read the web for you,

AI has lately been giving me the impression that it thinks I'm kind of dumb. I must be too lazy to read an email, or decide how I should spend my money, or decide where I should go on vacation.

And you know what? Maybe I will pick a voice assistant because it compliments the way I look.

You know what? Who am I kidding? We're all going to pick our favorite AI based on what silly emojis we can send. Let me know what AI features you're hoping for in the next Apple software. Thanks for watching, and I will catch you next Friday, the Friday before WWDC, where we will talk about one more thing in the world of Apple.