Apple Lets Developers Tap Into Its Offline AI Models

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple is launching what it calls the Foundation Models framework, which the company says will let developers tap into its AI models in an offline, on-device fashion. Onstage at WWDC 2025 on Monday, Apple VP of software engineering Craig Federighi said that the Foundation Models framework will let apps use on-device AI models created by Apple to drive experiences. These models ship as a part of Apple Intelligence, Apple's family of models that power a number of iOS features and capabilities.

"For example, if you're getting ready for an exam, an app like Kahoot can create a personalized quiz from your notes to make studying more engaging," Federighi said. "And because it happens using on-device models, this happens without cloud API costs [] We couldn't be more excited about how developers can build on Apple intelligence to bring you new experiences that are smart, available when you're offline, and that protect your privacy."

In a blog post, Apple says that the Foundation Models framework has native support for Swift, Apple's programming language for building apps for its various platforms. The company claims developers can access Apple Intelligence models with as few as three lines of code. Guided generation, tool calling, and more are all built into the Foundation Models framework, according to Apple. Automattic is already using the framework in its Day One journaling app, Apple says, while mapping app AllTrails is tapping the framework to recommend different hiking routes.

This is how it should be

[viperidaenz]

The future of AI should be local models.
Sure, you need big compute to train the models, but to run them, not so much, especially when run with hardware designed for it.

Re:

[Hadlock]

Google announced roughly the same thing, on device models for phones a couple weeks ago at their developer conference. The 1b model is fine for basic tasks like turning on lights, checking email, social media notifications etc and runs ok on midrange phone hardware. The 4b model technically runs but it's borderline unusable speed but it can answer questions like "how does a microwave work?" with moderate accuracy at a semi-scientific level which is impressive. I suspect most devices will be able to run a 1b

Re: This is how it should be

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

This is an important fork in the road. I'm pretty skeptical about putting Apple and privacy in the same sentence... but... this is a good move to claim the philosophical high ground.

I think it is a signal to the believers that Apple is worth it. They want tomorrow's business from you. Imagine how lucrative privacy will be ... think for a second if that were actually true...... no liability back to Apple?

If you're a Lawyer, that has tons of implications.

There is gonna be a big fight, because The King won't b