The iOS 18’Mail app will receive huge improvements thanks to ’AI with ‘Project Blackpearl’

With the imminent release of iOS 18, Apple users can expect a revolutionary evolution of the Mail app, thanks to an innovative project called “Project Blackpearl.” This initiative, developed in-house by Apple, will bring a number of impressive artificial intelligence-powered features that will radically transform the experience of managing email on iOS devices.

According to sources inside Apple, theMail app will undergo a major redesign, becoming much smarter and more intuitive. Thanks to the integration of advanced machine learning and AI technologies, the app will be able to offer a wide range of improvements, from automatic categorization of emails to the generation of intelligent responses, through more effective search and much more. Let’s look in detail at all the new features coming.

Improvements in the Mail app thanks to Project Blackpearl’s AI

Advanced email categorization through machine learning

One of the key features of Project Blackpearl will be the ability to automatically categorize emails based on their text content. Through the application of machine learning algorithms, the Mail app will be able to identify and categorize messages into several predefined categories, including:

• Business
• News
• Other
• Promotions
• Social
• Transactions

This innovative feature will enable users to navigate and manage their email in a much more organized and intuitive way, with an immediate overview of the type of content they receive.

AI-generated intelligent responses

Another key aspect of Project Blackpearl concerns the integration of artificial intelligence technologies for the automatic generation of email responses. Using sophisticated natural language models, the Mail app will be able to analyze the content of messages and suggest ready-to-use responses to the user that are tailored to the context.

This feature will prove particularly useful for professionals, customer service representatives, or companies that have to handle large volumes of emails on a daily basis. They will thus be able to save a lot of time and respond more efficiently and timely.

Improved contextualization of searches in the Mail app.

In addition to categorization and smart responses, Project Blackpearl will also bring significant improvements to the search functionality within the Mail app. Search results will be enriched with information from Contacts, geographic locations, and documents stored locally on the device.

This will enable users to get much more contextualized and relevant search results, making it easier to find crucial information such as phone numbers, email addresses or relevant attachments.

Apple’s AI at the service of Siri and system apps

The innovations introduced by Project Blackpearl will not only be limited to the Mail app, but will also extend to other system apps through integration with the virtual assistant Siri.

Siri becomes smarter and more versatile

Siri will benefit from a significant enhancement of its capabilities through integration with natural language models and artificial intelligence technologies developed by Apple. The virtual assistant will be able to better understand context and leverage information such as location, calendar events, and entity relationships to provide more targeted and effective responses and suggestions.

In addition, Siri will gain the ability to generate summaries and summaries of various types of text, including emails, messages, notifications, notes, and articles. These summaries will be of different kinds, such as keywords representative of the main theme, short summary sentences, or concise paragraphs.

Integration of Siri into system apps.

Siri’s integration with system apps will be further enhanced. Users will be able to interact directly with Siri to perform specific tasks within apps such as Photos, Messages and Notes.

For example, in the Photos app, users will be able to ask Siri to enhance a certain image, show photos from a certain period, or set an image as the device’s wallpaper. In Messages and Notes, Siri will be able to move individual items, open and analyze documents, and send files and images.

These integrations will make Siri much more versatile and able to assist users in a more direct and personalized way within system applications.

Image generation and editing with Apple’s AI.

Project Blackpearl not only focuses on text processing, but also includes advanced capabilities for image creation and editing using artificial intelligence.

A new framework for image generation

In pre-release operating systems, Apple introduced a new framework for AI-based image generation. This framework enables the creation of different types of images, including:

• Animations
• Emoji
• Illustrations
• Lineart
• Sketches

Apple is likely to make this AI-powered image generation feature available to end users in some form, perhaps through integration into the Photos app or other system apps.

Editing images with AI: the new “Clean Up” feature.

In addition to image generation, Project Blackpearl will also include AI-based editing features. Specifically, the Photos app will be updated with a new option called “Clean Up,” which will allow users to remove objects from photos through the use of generative artificial intelligence technologies.

This feature will replace the current Retouch tool, offering users a more advanced and effective way to manipulate and refine their images.

Summaries and text summaries with Apple’s AI.

Another crucial aspect of Project Blackpearl concerns the text summarization and synthesis capabilities, which will be greatly improved with artificial intelligence developed by Apple.

Different levels of summarization

Internally, Apple has tested and implemented several levels of summarization, including:

• Topic-level summaries: consisting of three key words representing the key concepts of a text
• Summaries of 10-20 words: using short sentences instead of full sentences
• Paragraph-level summaries: concise paragraphs of three sentences, with a maximum of 60 words

These different levels of summaries are designed to fit specific use cases and user interface elements to provide the most appropriate level of synthesis.

Types of texts that can be summarized

Thanks to the AI developed by Apple, Siri will be able to summarize a wide range of texts, including:

• Emails and email conversations
• Messages
• Notifications and notification stacks
• Notes
• Posts
• User-supplied texts and articles

This advanced summary feature will make Siri much more useful and versatile in assisting users in handling large amounts of information.

Apple’s AI instruction and guidance

Although Apple’s approach to AI and natural language models does not include a chatbot, the instructions used to train the software bear some similarities to ChatGPT prompts.

ChatGPT-like prompts for Apple’s AI.

Apple has created a series of prompts that instruct the AI to play the role of an expert in summarizing a certain type of text. The AI is required to maintain this role, otherwise its responses will not be considered useful or effective.

When summarizing a series of notifications, the AI must focus on the topic common to all notifications within the stack. Similarly, when analyzing and creating a summary of a user-supplied text, such as an article, the software must focus on the main topic of the text as a whole.

For user-supplied text, the AI is asked to avoid unnecessary preambles and exclude minor details. To generate a summary of recent messages or notification stacks, the software must emphasize key information, such as the names of the sender and recipient, as well as the time and date.

This targeted approach to prompt creation means that Siri will be the primary recipient of Apple’s AI-based summary updates. Through integration with system applications and generative AI, Siri will be able to do much more than it has done so far.

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