Microsoft Edge And Google Chrome are already inundated with new AI features, so we assume it was inevitable that Apple would also try to integrate some AI activities into its default browser. Apple is reportedly jumping on board AI Hype Train for iOS 18 (Although it continues on the caboose side rather than the car side) at the end of 1 Infinite Loop the company could look to integrate AI summaries and browser assistants into Safari, in a move reminiscent of the existing one Arc Browser. Unlike the competition, this time Apple could power everything via the device itself and not via the cloud.
What’s even more interesting is that the browser allows you to highlight and delete entire sections of web pages. Tired of the banner ads at the top of Gizmodo’s website? If the rumors are true, Safari might have the ability to hide this. This all emerges from a report by Apple Insider Based on the latest builds of Safari 18. The controls hidden in the browser’s latest test mockups seem to indicate that Safari is covering up areas of a website you don’t want to see. Better yet, it remembers your selections and deletes the same parts of the page again when you come back to it later. You have the option to reset the page to its original state.
This feature is similar to apps like 1Blocker on Safari with iPhone or uBlock Origin on other browsers, two apps that allow you to apply cosmetic filters to offensive ads. 1Blocker, in particular, tells Safari which parts of the page to open, which can also help increase the speed at which the page loads.
Of course, advertisers and online publishers wouldn’t be happy about built-in ad blocking features. The click-centric publishing model is already faltering stronger push for AI in Google Search.
However, this is still very early days and the code found in Safari 18 doesn’t necessarily indicate how Apple plans to roll out these features, if at all. But AI upgrades on Safari seem inevitable. So-called “Smart Search” would use a large language model to find key phrases and words in an article as the basis for its summary. AI summaries are already available in Edge through the Copilot feature Chrome’s Gemini-based assistant can perform a similar task.
AI capabilities may be Apple’s best bet if it wants to take control of Google’s search and advertising monopoly. That’s what Microsoft has done with its Edge browser and Bing Search, but so far Google Search and Chrome remain dominant in their categories. Apple is also relying entirely on AI for its upcoming releases. The M4 chipexpected to debut along with the new OLED iPad Prois said to have a better neural processor than the previous M-series CPUs. Likewise those next iPhone 16 is said to have a number of AI features and promises to run some of these language models or art generators on the device.
We’ll probably hear more about this when WWDC takes place on June 10th.