OpenAI has just taken a fairly significant step within Apple’s ecosystem. ChatGPT’s account on X has confirmed that ChatGPT can now connect to our iCloud Mail and Calendar through two new plugins. A new feature that lets us manage our emails and events through natural-language requests to ChatGPT.
Our mail and calendar, now in ChatGPT
With iCloud Mail connected to ChatGPT we can search for messages, summarize conversations, draft emails, and also send emails. Access to Calendar, meanwhile, lets us check our appointments, create events, and modify existing ones. Access that can be especially useful when we want to organize our day with a single request, for example, locating an invitation in your email and adding it to the calendar or receiving a summary of the most important emails and our schedule every morning.
To connect both services we have to create app-specific passwords for our Apple account. Then we’ll use them in the plugins, which are available on all ChatGPT plans, on the web, on desktop, and also in the iPhone app. Of course, our Dots can also use them.
And Siri? Integration still makes the difference
ChatGPT was already integrated with Siri, but now it gains direct access to iCloud, while Siri AI continues to evolve with one advantage we shouldn’t overlook: privacy.
Apple’s commitment to privacy is well known and the level of control we retain over our data when we use Siri is nowhere near the same as what we’ll get if we give ChatGPT access to all our email.
We’re looking at two very different ways of using the information in our Apple account. ChatGPT becomes more capable here and stands out for its power, while Siri keeps our information secure.
