Apple Intelligence: ChatGPT

Apple has gotten into what society is calling "Artificial Intelligence", or "AI", except they have put their own spin on the term. One of Apple’s core tenets is protecting user privacy, and they attempt to do so whenever possible. In order to accomplish this, Apple attempts to protect user privacy through a combination of performing as many requests on the device as possible. However, for advanced requests that may not always be possible. For those requests there is a feature called Private Cloud Compute. Private Cloud Compute is a set of servers run by Apple that are capable of handling your request, providing the result, and then the server is completely erased. If you need more details, be sure to check out the post that is the Introduction to Apple Intelligence.

Apple is releasing the Apple Intelligence features in batches. The first set of features released were done so in iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1. This set included "Typing with Siri", "Summarization and Mail", and "Writing Tools". The second set of Apple Intelligence features are being released with iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2. There are four new features for this batch. This article will cover integration with "ChatGPT".

Apple Intelligence is designed to work with your personal data. This is all well and good, but sometimes you might need to know about more than just your personal context. In these cases, you may need some more worldly context, and this is where ChatGPT can be useful.

iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 can all integrate Siri with ChatGPT in order to be able to ask about information that Siri does not have any idea about. You will need to enable ChatGPT; more on that in a moment. Before we dive into that, let us talk about privacy.

Privacy

It seems like every company today wants to gather as much information about you as possible. This could be something somewhat innocuous like where your mouse is to something extremely personal, like search history, or even personally identifiable information. With ChatGPT on iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia, you are in full control in two ways.

The first way is that you will need to confirm each time that you want to send a request to ChatGPT. This will only appear when you make a request that would warrant being sent to ChatGPT. This will need to be done for each request.

The second way is that you have an option of using a ChatGPT account. However, this is absolutely NOT required. If you do not have an account, all of your requests will be sent anonymously to the ChatGPT servers.

Enabling ChatGPT

If you want to enable ChatGPT, you can do so by using the following steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Scroll down to "Apple Intelligence & Siri".
3. Tap, or click, on Apple Intelligence & Siri to open up the settings.
4. Under "Extensions" tap, or click, on ChatGPT.
5. Tap, or click, on "Setup" next to Use ChatGPT to begin the setup wizard. A popup will appear.
6. Tap on the "Next" button to continue. A "Privacy" explanation screen will appear.
7. On the "Privacy" screen, tap on the "Enable ChatGPT" button. The optional account screen will appear.
8. On the "Using ChatGPT with an Account" page, you can Sign In with your existing ChatGPT account, or you can click on the "Enable ChatGPT without an Account" button.

ChatGPT Requests

When you make a Siri request that Siri cannot handle itself, you will see a prompt similar to this:

When you click on the "Use ChatGPT" button, your request will be sent to ChatGPT, and the result will be shown as a standard Siri result, with the ChatGPT information at the bottom of the screen.

ChatGPT Account

With ChatGPT on iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2, you can use the ChatGPT features without signing in. When you do this, you will have a limited amount of usage of the advanced ChatGPT models. If you make additional requests, those requests will use more basic models.

Many people already have a ChatGPT account, and you can sign into that account. When you sign into an account, all of your request history will be saved. There are two types of ChatGPT accounts: a free account and a paid account.

If you do not have a paid ChatGPT account, you can actually upgrade to ChatGPT Plus right from within settings on iOS or iPadOS. To upgrade to ChatGPT Plus, perform the following steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Scroll down to "Apple Intelligence & Siri".
3. Under Extensions, tap on "ChatGPT".
4. Tap on "Upgrade to ChatGPT Plus". A popup will appear.
5. Tap on the "Subscribe" button. An App Store popup will appear.
6. Tap on the App Store "Subscribe" button to confirm you want to subscribe.

Once you have subscribed, you can use the advanced features of ChatGPT. It should be noted that if you already have a subscription, it should be reflected as such when you sign into your account.

Closing Thoughts

Being able to use ChatGPT for requests that Siri cannot answer natively is a good addition. The fact that you can make a decision of whether or not to send a request to Siri is a great privacy benefit. Along with this, you can use ChatGPT without an account, which means that you can maintain your privacy or your request history, depending on your needs.

ChatGPT is currently the only service integrated with Siri, but it is likely that additional ones will be added in the future.

Be sure to check out all of the other articles in the Apple Intelligence series.