Apple said on Monday it will open up the underlying technology it uses for Apple Intelligence and announced an overhaul of its operating systems.

The tone and content of the presentations at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference focused more on incremental developments, including live translations for phone calls, that improve everyday life, rather than the sweeping ambitions for AI that Apple’s rivals are marketing.

Apple software chief Craig Federighi said the company is opening up the foundational AI model that it uses for some of its own features to third-party developers.

“This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar,” Federighi, senior vice-president of software engineering, said of the delays of some features, such as improvements to the Siri virtual assistant.

In an early demonstration of how partners could improve Apple apps, the company added image generation from OpenAI’s ChatGPT to its Image Playground app, saying that user data would not be shared with OpenAI without a user’s permission.

Apple is facing an unprecedented set of technical and regulatory challenges as some of its key executives kicked off the company’s annual software developer conference on Monday.

Shares of Apple, which were flat before the conference, slipped 1.5 per cent after executives took the stage in Cupertino, California.