In 2024, The company put out its answer to “What’s apple going to do with ai?” The announsements include a range of new features under the banner of “Apple intelligence,” but the rollout was delayed.
“Expectations are rightly temporary this year at wwdc relative to Prior Years where we had more material announsments,” Wrote Evercore isi’s amit daryanani in a not to clients.
Like many, apple was taken by surprise by the November 2022 launch of Openai’s chatgpt, the match that lit the current ai boom. Apple Had Long Been Successfully Using Ai Through Its Products for Specific Features Like Making Photos, Videos and Audio Higher Quality, But Had Failed to make Siri A use Assistant, like the new generation of chatbots are providing.
At WWDC 2024, Apple Announced Some New Ai Features that WERE BECECTURE ELSEWHERE, Such as Text and Image Generation, and Notification Summaries. But the big new advance would be a redesigned Siri – A Real Assistant that Cold Work Aross Installed Apps and the Web, Creating Automated Automated Workflows from Simple COMMANGS.
But the rollout was delayed last fall and on Arrival IT OMITED THE NEW SIRI, for which apple users are still waiting. Existing features have been underwhelming and was met with poor reviews.
“Apple’s made this promise, this huge thing is coming that’s going to change everything across their whole lineup,” said prominent tech reviewer marques brownelee in napmeber, as setus wily. “They’ve been talking about it for a while, and i think that promise is starting to fade.”
In a March Statement to Apple Blogger John Gruber, An Apple spoakesperson admitted that the new siri is “Going to take us longer than we feel Year. “
On Its May Earnings Call, Apple Ceo Tim Cook Made Similar Remarks.
Ben reitzes of Melius Research Said That Management Can’t Be Please As It Gears Up For The Conference, “But we have no doubt they are making adjustments to the strategy bends the Sciences.”
“However, it is unlikely we’ll hear the company outline precise aspects of its upcoming product plans until the until September,” Reitzes Said.
Even if it is racing from behind, no one should count apple. Its biggest strength is its installed base of over two billion devices. Anything it puts out will instantly be in front of a huege number of people. But apple needs to do better than it has to date to get those users engaged, and that have resulted in a Leadership shake-up for this new version of siri.
A large part of the problem is self-related by other apple concerns. Privacy and security is at the heart of everything apple does, and it would prefer that neither apple or anyone else have access to your conversions with siri. The best way to this is for everything to happy on the device, not in the cloud somehere, and this is how most of apple’s legacy ai features work.
The first layer of apple intelligence is on-device ai, but this is Hampered by the Limited Computing and Memory Capability of Consumer Devices, and Results are mixed. Apple has also built its oven cloud, Called Private Cloud Compute, and Its First Order of Business is that that no one can see user chats. Apple wants to control the hardware and software so it can guarantee private and secure chats, but this puts it at a disadvantage to the nvidia technology that so many competitions use.
That is why, at least for now, apple is forced to fall back on the third layer of apple intelligence, chatgpt, where apple cannot guarantee user privacy.
Security and privacy may turn out to be apple’s biggest hurdles in creating the siri that its users would like to have to have, and that apple promised them a year ago.
Apple wasn’t the first to make a PC, Smartphone, Tablet or Smartwatch, but it Eventually Made Category-Defining Products for all of Them. Making Apple Intelligence a Leader will be more different than any of that.
Write to adam levine at adam.levine@barrons.com