TweetDeck was one of my favorite ways to use Twitter, back when Twitter was Twitter, not X, and before I migrated to Threads. That's why I'm so excited that Threads has completed its global rollout of a feature that lets me organize my feed just how I like it.

Thread's new columns feature lets you organize your desktop feed into separate, individual feeds running simultaneously next to each other. You can create new feed columns for your following tab, notifications, specific accounts and by search terms. This is especially useful if you have a lot of interests and want to create separate feeds for each of them.

Creating your custom Threads feed is easy and can make your scrolling experience more enjoyable. Here's what you need to know about setting up your web experience -- and the one setting you need to enable.

How to set up columns on Threads

Everyone should now be able to set up columns on Threads. Here's how.

1. Navigate to threads.net on your desktop.

2. Click the push-pin icon in the left-side menu.

3. Select which feed you want to separate or use the search bar to find a specific topic. Clicking on the term will automatically add the column to your display.

4. Click the three dots to the right of the column name.

5. Toggle on Auto update. 

You can easily unpin columns using the drop-down menu in each column by clicking on the three dots next to each column name. You can see that a column will automatically update as Threads will add a clock icon to the top menu, too. You can use the drop-down arrow next to For You to change your original feed to Following, Liked and Saved threads.

Unlike TweetDeck, you can't easily reorder columns, so for now you have to unpin and repin columns to get your display as you want it.

For more, check out all the new Instagram Reels and Stories features and what to know about Threads joining the fediverse.

Tomorrow, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off. And the company that brought you those animated Memoji you never use on the iPhone and that made Personas so you can video chat as a character straight out of Polar Express while wearing a Vision Pro has a plan to win the generative AI race: weird emoji.

While companies like ChatGPT, Google and Microsoft have a head start using artificial intelligence trained on large language models to generate text and conversations that sound more human, remove items and people from photos, and develop tools to make weather forecasts more accurate, Apple is, according to a Bloomberg report, going to offer the ability to put AI-generated emoji in your chats.

Read more: WWDC 2024 Live Blog

And people will love it -- because this is Apple. 

Watch this: Apple's AI at WWDC Will Take a Different Twist

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Of course there is much more to Apple's AI plans than just the ability to make any emoji you can imagine (or rather not imagine) a reality. 

At WWDC, the iPhone-maker is expected to show off new versions of its operating systems like iOS 18 and debut generative AI tools. When I first heard about Apple's reported AI features, I was fascinated, and not just by the food-animal hybrid emoji possibilities. I was genuinely filled with hope that Apple could actually set itself apart from all the other AI criticism and controversy currently happening in tech.

But let's back up a bit to set the scene.

Back in February, during a first-quarter earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook told shareholders that the company is putting "a tremendous amount of time and effort" into integrating AI into its products. Then in May, on a second-quarter earnings call, he said that Apple was making a significant investment into generative AI. 

While we expect to hear a lot about AI at WWDC, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman got the tech circles buzzing with his report on what AI features could be coming to iOS 18 and MacOS 15.

We could see AI help edit photos, send messages or reply to email. AI could summarize long messages and transcribe voice messages. Search could be smarter, and Siri could speak more conversationally. AI tools might even summarize something you come across browsing on Safari. A lot of these features wouldn't be that surprising because they already exist on the latest Samsung Galaxy phones and Google Pixels.

But there are three possible Apple AI tools in Gurman's report that stood out to me.

On-the-fly AI emoji, please and thank you

While there already exist tools and sites that can mash up emoji icons into ridiculous symbols, like Emoji Kitchen (I've talked about the topic before on CNET's One More Thing show), Apple might launch its own version of this tool in iOS 18. 

Bloomberg says that the iPhone might be able to create an emoji for you on the fly, something outside the standard emoji library set by the unicode consortium. Apple knows how to have some fun with messaging, and it's right out of the company's playbook to give folks something silly to talk about in a software update. 

When Apple does a weird cartoony thing, that's the feature that gets all the attention. When the Vision Pro came out, we all gawked at the Personas. The iPhone X's true depth front-facing camera was fun to show off because of the animated Memoji faces in chat. And when Apple announced the iPhone 11, it was the ability to record slow-motion videos with the front-facing camera that made the phone more exciting (I'm glad the term "slofie" didn't catch on -- nice try, 2019 Apple). 

But I am being serious when I say that Apple is really smart to give people a lighthearted playground for AI image generation. We are in a time filled with stories of how AI systems are ethically questionable and making terrible goofs.

Recently, Google set its Gemini AI free on search, and folks poked fun at the weird results it gave. Gemini pulled jokes from Reddit and The Onion, then spewed out answers as hard facts, telling people that eating rocks is good for you and recommending people put glue on pizza. 

That same week, movie star Scarlett Johansson publicly criticized OpenAI and got her lawyers involved over its lack of transparency. ChatGPT's flirtatious chatbot voice sounded eerily like her, despite Johansson denying the company permission to use her voice. The voice has since been removed. 

With emoji creation, Apple's implementation could get customers interested in using AI while avoiding any controversy. This is assuming that people don't make something terrible with the emojis. Let's not go crazy with the eggplants, people. 

Siri reboot: Now with more AI

One thing I'm watching out for at WWDC is if Apple's personal assistant, Siri, gets an upgrade to better understand our commands. The Bloomberg report mentioned that a more advanced Siri would be coming to not just the iPhone, but also the Apple Watch for on-the-go tasks. 

A revamped Siri that works well on the watch is exactly how Apple can stand apart from Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. If Apple has a useful AI helper on a wearable, it would do what other companies have been trying and failing to do so far: Make an AI companion that can go anywhere without needing the phone.

Read more: AI Could Be the Key to Making Smartwatches Better

A month ago we saw the launch of the Humane AI Pin, a $700 AI computer you wear on a shirt. But early reviews blasted the wearable for being buggy and not fulfilling its promises. Humane, the startup behind the AI Pin, is now reportedly trying to sell itself for as much as $1 billion.

Last month was also the launch of another tiny AI-powered handheld gadget called the Rabbit R1. It also tried to be an AI assistant that you could take anywhere and answer questions, but it didn't answer much and left tech reviewers disappointed. 

If Apple brings a more AI-savvy Siri to the Apple Watch, then it will show all these other companies how a real AI voice assistant can actually be helpful on the go, instead of just being hyped as helpful. 

But that feels like a big "if."

Other companies are already dabbling with putting more AI on watches as a health or workout assistant. The Amazfit Cheetah has an AI running coach of sorts. Google's FitBit Labs is launching a new program that uses generative AI to answer questions and provide more context about your activity data. The idea is that the AI could be used to help you set realistic fitness goals.

A year ago, Bloomberg reported that Apple was working on some sort of AI-powered health coaching service. But who knows how close we are to seeing that launch. Apple also took some baby steps by putting more powerful chips in the latest watch models. That means Siri requests are processed on the device faster and more securely, instead of having the data be processed in the cloud. The Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 let you ask Siri about your health data or log information about your health. And it's all done locally on the device.

Surprise twist: More privacy

Another area where Apple could stand apart from everyone else is privacy. It's like that old ad, what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone. 

Bloomberg reports that much of the processing for Apple's AI in the next version of iOS and MacOS would run entirely on the device. 

But there's a twist that worries me.

It's also being reported that if an AI feature requires more horsepower, the work will be pushed for processing in the cloud, to data centers powered by Apple's M2 Ultra chips. 

So Apple will really need to explain how our data is being protected and give examples of what tasks might need to be calculated in the cloud. What is being sacrificed here? The Information reports that Apple might protect cloud data by using some sort of virtual black box.

If Apple's AI system can summarize our private notifications, our text messages, the sites we visit and the media we consume, Apple needs to be clear about how it's handling our privacy. 

There are already many questions on what data these AI companies are slurping up to train their systems, and what we are giving away to feed these beasts. So Apple needs to be prepared to talk about privacy, which might be harder to do because of these last two rumored announcements.

The same reports say Apple will announce it partnered with OpenAI somehow. I don't know how Apple is going to walk this line of promoting a safe, private environment, but also boasting that it invited a troublemaker into the backyard to play in our sandbox. Even if you trust Apple, are you ready to trust Apple's friends? 

Apple's AI already caused drama before it's announced

Another concern comes from a rumored feature on the Safari browser called Web Eraser. As reported by Apple Insider, the tool lets you take out any element of a website, like an ad. And Business Insider reports that a group of French publishers and advertisers are asking Tim Cook to halt deploying this tool because of how it could hurt publishers that rely on advertising for their business. It's not even out yet and there's already a signed letter against it, so we'll have to see what that's all about. 

So how does Apple dance around this drama? Easy. Tell everyone it's just in beta. That's what Bloomberg is reporting. Apple will likely label AI features as beta or that they're still being tested. 

Oh sure, every single iPhone customer will try it. But hey, you can't get mad at Apple if it hangs out an "under construction" sign and its AI becomes wonky and falls apart on you, misses a fact in the summary, skipped a word in a transcription, or causes your website to fail because you can't make money anymore.

It's like being confidently unconfident.

But even with a beta label, there's one slipup that people won't forgive: a privacy slipup.

Do You Know About These 17 Hidden iOS 17 Features?

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CNET's Patrick Holland edited this report.

Editors' note: CNET used an AI engine to help create several dozen stories, which are labeled accordingly. The note you're reading is attached to articles that deal substantively with the topic of AI but are created entirely by our expert editors and writers. For more, see our AI policy.

We already live in a world where virtual assistants can engage in a seamless (and even flirtatious) conversation with people. But Apple's virtual assistant, Siri, struggles with some of the basics.

For example, I asked Siri when the Olympics would take place this year, and it quickly spat out the correct dates for the summer games. When I followed that up with "Add it to my calendar," the virtual assistant responded imperfectly with "What should I call it?" The answer to that question would be obvious to us humans. Apple's virtual assistant was lost. Even when I responded, "Olympics," Siri replied, "When should I schedule it for?"

Siri tends to falter since it lacks contextual awareness, which limits its ability to follow a conversation like a human can. That could change as early as June 10, the first day of Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The iPhone maker is expected to unveil major updates with its upcoming mobile operating system, likely to be called iOS 18, with significant changes reportedly in store for Siri.

Apple's virtual assistant made waves when it debuted with the iPhone 4S back in 2011. For the first time, people could talk to their phones and receive a humanlike response. Some Android phones offered basic voice search and voice actions before Siri, but those were more command-based and widely considered to be less intuitive.

Read more: WWDC 2024 Live Blog 

Siri represented a leap forward in voice-based interaction and laid the groundwork for subsequent voice assistants, such as Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant and even OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini chatbots.

Move over Siri, multimodal assistants are here

Though Siri impressed people with its voice-based experience in 2011, its capabilities are seen by some as lagging behind those of its peers. Alexa and Google Assistant are adept at understanding and answering questions, and both have expanded into smart homes in different ways than Siri has. It just seems that Siri hasn't lived up to its full potential, although its rivals have received similar criticism.

In 2024, Siri also faces a dramatically different competitive landscape, which has been supercharged by generative AI. In recent weeks, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft have unveiled a new wave of futuristic virtual assistants with multimodal capabilities, which pose a competitive threat to Siri. According to NYU professor Scott Galloway on a recent episode of his podcast, those updated chatbots are poised to be the "Alexa and Siri killers."

Earlier this month, OpenAI unveiled its latest AI model. The announcement underscored just how far virtual assistants have come. In its San Francisco demo, OpenAI showed off how GPT-4o could hold two-way conversations in even more humanlike ways, complete with the ability to inflect tone, make sarcastic remarks, speak in whispers and even flirt. The demoed tech quickly drew comparisons to Scarlett Johansson's character in the 2013 Hollywood drama Her, in which a lonely writer falls in love with his female-sounding virtual assistant, voiced by Johansson. Following GPT-4o's demo, the American actor accused OpenAI of creating a virtual assistant voice that sounded "eerily similar" to her own, without her permission. Open AI said the voice was never meant to resemble Johansson's.

The controversy seemingly upstaged some GPT-4o features, like its native multimodal capabilities, which means the AI model can understand and respond to inputs beyond text, encompassing pictures, spoken language and even video. In practice, GPT-4o can chat with you about a photo you show (by uploading media), describe what's happening in a video clip, and discuss a news article. 

Read more: Scarlett Johansson "Angered" Over OpenAI's Chatbot Mimicking 'Her' Voice

The day after OpenAI's preview, Google showed off its own multimodal demo, unveiling Project Astra, a prototype that the company has billed as the "future of AI assistants." In a demo video, Google detailed how users can show Google's virtual assistant their surroundings by using their smartphone's camera, and then proceed to discuss objects in their environment. For example, the person interacting with Astra at what was presumably Google's London office asked Google's virtual assistant to identify an object that makes a sound in the room. In response, Astra pointed out the speaker sitting on a desk.

Google's Astra prototype can not only make sense of its surroundings but also remember details. When the narrator asked where they left their glasses, Astra was able to say where they were last seen by responding with, "On the corner of the desk next to a red apple." 

The race to create flashy virtual assistants doesn't end with OpenAI and Google. Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, is making progress on turning its Grok chatbot into one with multimodal capabilities, according to public developer documents. In May, Amazon said it was working on giving Alexa, its decades-old virtual assistant, a generative AI upgrade. 

Will Siri become multimodal?

Multimodal conversational chatbots currently represent the cutting edge for AI assistants, potentially offering a window into the future of how we navigate our phones and other devices. 

Apple doesn't yet have a digital assistant with multimodal capabilities, putting it behind the curve. The iPhone maker has published research on the subject, though. In October, it discussed Ferret, a multimodal AI model that can understand what's happening on your phone screen and perform a range of tasks based on what it sees. In the paper, researchers explore how Ferret can identify and report on what you're looking at and help you traverse apps, among other capabilities. The research points to a possible future in which the way we use our iPhones and other devices changes entirely.

Where Apple could stand out is in terms of privacy. The iPhone maker has long championed privacy as a core value when designing products and services, and it'll bill the new version of Siri as a more private alternative to its competitors, according to The New York Times. Apple is expected to achieve this privacy goal by processing Siri's requests on-device and turning to the cloud for more complex tasks. Those will be processed in data centers with Apple-made chips, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

As for a chatbot, Apple is close to finalizing a deal with OpenAI to potentially bring ChatGPT to the iPhone, according to Bloomberg, in a possible indication that Siri won't be competing directly with ChatGPT or Gemini. Instead of doing things like writing poetry, Siri will hone in on tasks it can already do, and get better at those, according to The New York Times.

How will Siri change? All eyes on Apple's WWDC

Traditionally, Apple has been intentionally slow to come to market, preferring to take a wait-and-see approach regarding emerging technology. This strategy has often worked, but not always. For instance, the iPad wasn't the first tablet, but for many, including CNET editors, it's the best tablet. On the other hand, Apple's HomePod smart speaker hit the market several years after the Amazon Echo and Google Home, but it never caught up to its rivals' market share. A more recent example on the hardware side is foldable phones. Apple is the only major holdout. Every major rival -- Google, Samsung, Honor, Huawei and even lesser-known companies such as Phantom -- has beaten Apple to the punch. 

Historically, Apple has taken the approach of updating Siri in intervals, says Avi Greengart, lead analyst at Techsponential.

"Apple has always been more programmatic about Siri than Amazon, Google or even Samsung," said Greengart. Apple seems to add knowledge to Siri in bunches — sports one year, entertainment the next." 

With Siri, Apple is widely expected to play catch-up rather than break new ground this year. Still, Siri will likely be a major focus of Apple's upcoming operating system, iOS 18, which is rumored to bring fresh AI features. Apple is expected to show off further AI integrations into existing apps and features, including Notes, emojis, photo editing, messages and emails, according to Bloomberg. 

As for Siri, it's tipped to evolve into a more intelligent digital helper this year. Apple is reportedly training its voice assistant on large language models to improve its ability to answer questions with more accuracy and sophistication, according to the October edition of Mark Gurman's Bloomberg newsletter Power On. 

The integration of large language models, as well as the technology behind ChatGPT, is poised to transform Siri into a more context-aware and powerful virtual assistant. It would enable Siri to understand more complex and more nuanced questions and also provide accurate responses. This year's iPhone 16 lineup is also expected to come with larger memory for supporting new Siri capabilities, according to The New York Times. 

Read more: What Is an LLM and How Does It Relate to AI Chatbots? 

"My hope is that Apple can use generative AI to give Siri the ability to feel more like a thoughtful assistant that understands what you are trying to ask, but use data-based systems for answers that are data bound," Techsponential's Greengart told CNET.

Siri could also improve at performing multistep tasks. A September report by The Information detailed how Siri might respond to simple voice commands for more complex tasks, such as turning a set of photos into a GIF and then sending it to one of your contacts. That would be a significant step forward in Siri's capabilities.

"Apple also defines how iPhone apps work, so it has the ability to allow Siri to work across apps with the developer's permission — potentially opening up new capabilities for a smarter Siri to securely accomplish tasks on your behalf," Greengart said.

Editors' note: CNET used an AI engine to help create several dozen stories, which are labeled accordingly. The note you're reading is attached to articles that deal substantively with the topic of AI but are created entirely by our expert editors and writers. For more, see our AI policy.