Apple's sweeping new artificial intelligence play takes a page from features introduced by rival tech companies in recent years - but adds the polished, user-friendly twist that consumers have come to expect from the electronics giant. At the company's annual developer's conference in San Francisco on Monday, Apple executives announced a raft of features in the company's soon-to-be released desktop and mobile operating systems that are powered by artificial intelligence, or the blend of powerful computing capabilities and software algorithms. Such technology can make the phone or other device appear smarter because it anticipates the types of activities people want to do. Apple also said it was opening up many applications to outside developers, including its messaging platform iMessage, Maps, and virtual assistant Siri - a departure for the company, which in the past has kept these systems tightly controlled. For Apple, more AI and more integrations with third party services will mean less fatigue for consumers, who are already overwhelmed with too many apps, too many devices, and too much data.

Apple just showed the world what's next for the company's core products during its annual Worldwide Developers Conference keynote. Less usual, this year marked an important step for Apple, as it revealed that it will let developers plug third-party apps into a handful of its products and services. Here's a look at the most important announcements Apple made June 13 during the WWDC keynote. Apple's iOS 10 update, which lands on iPhone and iPads this fall, is among its largest software revamps yet. Nearly every aspect of Apple's mobile software, from the way 3D Touch works to the look and feel of Apple's native apps, is getting an update.

As per usual, Apple's annual developer's conference followed on the heels of Google's, with the tech giants trumpeting their latest updates for both consumers and coders one after the other. On Monday, CEO Tim Cook's team repeated some of the same tropes and themes as their rivals, from making several Gold State Warriors references to announcing crowd-pleasing features that attempt to minimize taps and maximize our ability to be expressive through our texting machines. But if Google's big point was emphasizing how human-like its technology has become, Apple's was emphasizing how much the company cares about humanity itself -- even if many of the biggest cheers came in response to updates about things like triple-sized emoji. Apple can seem like a exclusive tower made of silicon and secrets, and the company knows that is part of its appeal. Thousands of developers were kept in masses behind guardrails leading up to the keynote.

Apple also introduced a new design language throughout iOS apps including Music, Photos, and News, which unifies some of the options and controls across the apps. Another major development from the developer perspective is the opening of many APIs for control of an incorporation into technologies such as Siri, Photos, Maps, Phone, and Messages. Apple's 3D Touch technology will be greatly expanded, ironically introduced to solve a problem Apple introduced with the iPhone 6s ... the dramatically faster Touch ID means that users often unlock the iPhone too quickly to read notifications. In iOS 10, notifications can respond to 3D Touch to respond to notifications entirely from the lockscreen. The lockscreen also gains a dedicated music-control pane, as well as new slide controls (left to access camera, right to access widgets).

In the summer of 1956, the Dartmouth Research Project on Artificial Intelligence would legitimise the field, turning AI from a subject of absurd fiction to a scientific pursuit that looked set to change the world. And yet, 60 years on it feels like AI is only just beginning to reveal its true potential. Recent advancements in connectivity and the IoT have triggered an explosion in the volume of data, and AI is becoming an essential tool in handling this. Just two years ago, Stephen Hawking told the Independent that creating successful AI would be "the greatest event in human history". However, he went on to say that "unfortunately, it might also be the last". Concerns about the autonomous power given to AI technology, as well as the sensitive data that it is able to access, have raised serious questions on how AI should be managed.

As expected, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) announced at WWDC today that it is opening access to Siri to third-party application developers, enabling them to integrate their wares with the ubiquitous personal assistant. And the move will almost surely be a big step forward for iOS. Owners of iPhones and iPads make 2 billion requests to Siri every week, said Craig Federighi, the company's vice president of software engineering, during the event in San Francisco today. With iOS 10, which is expected to be released in the next several months, Apple will offer an API (application programming interface) for developers looking to allow users to navigate their apps via Siri. "There are so many things that you can ask Siri, but now in iOS 10 you can do so much more because we're opening up Siri to developers," Federighi said.

Apple, known for its steady stream of slick consumer electronic devices, used its annual developer conference in San Francisco to roll out a raft of millennial-friendly texting tools to enhance emojis, image sharing and add animations to messages. Among a two-hour stream of product announcements at the annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) event, Apple engineers demonstrated the latest update of Apple's smartphone software iOS, which will now let iPhone users add larger emojis, see photos and videos appear in a stream of text messages, add animated effects and "emojify" messages by converting typed words into emoji. Opening the event with a moment of silence for the victims of the weekend's shooting at a gay night club in Orlando, CEO Tim Cook – who has become a leader on gay rights issues since talking about his own sexuality in 2014 – called the attacks a "senseless unconscionable act of terrorism and hate aimed at dividing and destroying". Cook then set about laying out his vision for a future where Apple's software forms the central hub of its customers' lives, helping track their fitness, send love notes, navigate the road and trade pictures of cute dogs. Apple is clearly responding to the voice of the consumer; messages is the most popular app on iOS, and the new features are designed to offer more playful options that replicate some successful third party messaging apps. "We're providing emoji predictions as you type," said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering.

If Apple's battle with the FBI in the case centered on the iPhone 5C of the San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook showed the world anything, it was that the company is serious about protecting its customers' privacy. Consistent with engaging in a high-profile fight with the law enforcement agency over its insistence on keeping all its customers' data on their iPads and iPhones, Apple has fallen behind the likes of Facebook, Google and Microsoft in leveraging the power of cloud computing to launch more advanced artificial intelligence (AI) features in operating systems and applications. Apple doubled down on that privacy stance Monday, even as the company revealed it was working on a new technology that would allow it to roll out more advanced AI features while keeping its customers' data safe from prying eyes. Called "differential privacy," this technology enables both the anonymity of data and the spotting of trends, with one privacy expert describing it as "visionary." The firm not only opened its digital assistant Siri to third-party app developers but also made it available on desktop personal computers.

Kevin Lynch, Apple's vice president of technology, previewed a new operating system for the Apple Watch that will make the wearable operate faster and will include new health, fitness and navigation capabilities when it becomes available in the fall. Users have noted the device's slow load time for apps as one of its major shortcomings, but Lynch said "in watchOS 3, your favorite apps should respond instantly."

Apple has made a landmark change to its 15-year-old desktop and laptop operating system. OS X has become macOS Sierra. The change was announced on stage in San Francisco's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium by Apple's Craig Federighi, ditching the naming scheme devised under the watch of founder Steve Jobs on his return to the company in 1997. The OS X nomenclature had reached OS X 10.11 with El Capitan, but Apple's next version will be simply named macOS Sierra, bringing it in line with the naming convention for its mobile and tablet operating system iOS. Apart from a name change, Apple has overhauled iTunes and Apple music, while macOS will finally gain full Siri integration, after Apple's voice assistant was first introduced on iOS with the iPhone 4S in October 2011.