Apple is expected to unveil its iPhone 16 at an event on Monday, with a move to artificial intelligence that will do everything from smarten up its often weak assistant Siri to creating custom emojis on the fly.
The event, called “It’s Glowtime,” will take place at 9 a.m. CT. It will be streamed live on Apple from Cupertino, Calif., in the auditorium named after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who brought out the first iPhone in 2007 and waved it like a magic wand while predicting it would reshape society.
Apple has sold billions of iPhones since then, helping to create about $3 trillion in shareholder wealth. But over the past decade, there have mostly been minor upgrades from one model to the next – a factor that has caused people to wait to buy a new iPhone and led to a recent decline in sales of Apple’s marquee product.
What you can expect
The iPhone 16 is generating more buzz because it is the first model tailored specifically for AI, a technology expected to spark the biggest revolution in the industry since Jobs launched Apple into the smartphone market 17 years ago.
The advances included in the iPhone 16 could make Apple “the gatekeeper of the consumer AI revolution,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote in a research note.
Apple’s pivot began three months ago with a preview of its new approach under a developer conference, helps build anticipation for Monday’s showcase.
Since the June conference, competitors like Samsung and Google have made even more strides in AI. Google even took the unusual step of introducing its latest Pixel phones packed with its own AI magic last month instead of following its traditional October schedule in an effort to upstage Apple’s iPhone 16 release.
In an effort to differentiate itself from the early leaders in AI, the technology baked into the iPhone 16 is marketed as “Apple Intelligence.” Still, Apple Intelligence is similar to the generically named AI already available on Google’s Pixel 9 and The Samsung Galaxy S24 was released in January.
The event on Monday is also rumored to bring the Apple Watch Series 10 and AirPods 4.