Apple is building an AI assistant into Keynote, Pages and Numbers, its apps for slides, documents and spreadsheets, and Apple says it is built on a mix of its own AI models and OpenAI's. Apple announced it on Tuesday, Oct. 27, as part of an update to Apple Creator Studio, its subscription bundle of creative apps. Subscribers get the update in November at no extra cost. Apple says the assistant understands the document a person has open, so they can get help without leaving their work.
Apple says that in Keynote the assistant will help design, animate and refine slides, and in Pages it will draft, restructure and polish writing. In Numbers, Apple says, it will do calculations, organize data, suggest a chart type with a one-tap preview and build custom tables. Logic Pro for Mac, Apple's music-making app, is getting a similar assistant, which Apple says uses its own models and models from other companies. Apple says it can help start a new song or set up a vocal track from a single request.
The assistant comes with the subscription, which costs $12.99 a month or $129 a year in the U.S., or $2.99 a month for new subscribers who are college students or educators, for a limited time. The free versions of Keynote, Pages and Numbers still come with every new iPhone, iPad and Mac, but Apple describes the assistant as a feature for subscribers and has not said whether the free versions will get it. The assistant will start as a beta, an early test version, in U.S. English only. It needs an iPhone, iPad or Mac that can run Apple's AI features, with iOS 27, iPadOS 27 or macOS 27 or later.
The three apps will also let outside AI tools work inside them. Apple says the apps will support the Model Context Protocol, which lets outside AI agents and tools read a file's content, make edits and run automated actions in Keynote, Pages and Numbers, also as an early test version. An AI agent is AI that can carry out tasks on its own, such as using apps and websites, instead of only answering questions. This part will work only on a Mac with macOS 27 or later.
Other apps in the bundle are getting AI tools as well: in Pixelmator Pro, Apple's photo-editing app, a person will be able to circle part of a picture and describe the change they want.
Apple's announcement does not say which OpenAI models the assistant uses, how the work is split between Apple's models and OpenAI's, or what happens to the documents it works on. Apple also has not given an exact date in November.
Correction (Oct. 28): an earlier version said Logic Pro's assistant is also built on OpenAI's models. Apple says it uses Apple's own models and models from other companies, and names OpenAI only for Keynote, Pages and Numbers.