Scrambling to catch up, Apple’s first set of modern AI features won’t be as impressive as rival offerings, Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg News, but the company is betting that its massive customer base can give it an edge.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
At Apple Inc.’s developers conference next month, the company will unveil a different approach to artificial intelligence, focusing on tools that ordinary consumers can use in their daily lives. The idea is to appeal to a user’s practical side — and leave some of the more whiz-bang features to other companies.
Apple is in a challenging position. It needs to convince consumers and investors that it’s doing exciting things in AI. But the company is following major AI announcements from Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI, which have stolen the spotlight.
Apple is preparing to spend a good portion of its Worldwide Developers Conference laying out its AI-related features. At the heart of the new strategy is Project Greymatter — a set of AI tools that the company will integrate into core apps like Safari, Photos and Notes. The push also includes operating system features such as enhanced notifications.
The system will work as follows: Much of the processing for less computing-intensive AI features will run entirely on the device. But if a feature requires more horsepower, the work will be pushed to the cloud.
Apple is bringing the new AI features to iOS 18 and macOS 15 — and both operating systems will include software that determines whether a task should be handled on the device or via the cloud. Most of the on-device features will be supported by iPhone, iPad and Mac chips released in the last year or so. The cloud component, meanwhile, will be powered by M2 Ultra chips located in data centers…
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MacDailyNews Take: The new “AI features” for iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS to be revealed at WWDC is mainly a marketing exercise. The pressure is on Apple’s marketing team to position the company as an innovator in the space (“only Apple does so much on-device AI which enhances users’ privacy to ‘stunning’ effect,” etc.) that also makes “smart partnerships” with other AI companies (OpenAI, for example; even though it’s currently forced to partner if they want to offer any real GenAI features). Now, more than ever, finding themselves so far behind, Apple needs to sell, sell, sell!
Apple was caught flat-footed, due to a lack of vision on the part of leadership… So, the only solution is to partner with a [Google, OpenAI, Baidu, etc.] for the real GenAI stuff while pretending (marketing) really hard that some on-device AI Apple has whipped up in a few months is “insanely great Apple innovation” that’s at the heart of Apple’s 2024’s AI announcements when it’s really just an adjunct… Watch Apple make a big show of its on-device AI at WWDC and run many ads touting it from June onwards.
Apple hopes to buy time for the data center buildouts and investments that will be required for them to someday own their own AI technology and not have to license it from the likes of [Google, OpenAI, Baidu, etc.].
This is what happens after a decade plus with a caretaker CEO at the helm after he hits the last page of his iteration playbook, yet attempts to stay in the game for too long. – MacDailyNews, April 1, 2024
See also: Apple is just weeks away from unveiling its big AI marketing effort – May 20, 2024
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The cost structure and confusion of other companies’ AI offerings are starting to become clear. And nobody has a monetization strategy, let alone a profitable model. This gives Apple a bit of breathing room and an opportunity to re-frame AI for consumers.
Apple can make AI valuable to ordinary people (right place, right interface).
Apple can monetize AI (through subscriptions and regular old hardware sales).
Apple can reduce the cost structure of AI (on-device compute = customer pays).
Apple has a real opportunity to wow its customers and the market.
Let’s go!!
The monetization strategy is to have Apple, the no-show in the AI race thus far, pay you to even exist on this track. Assuming even a very modest $1 billion contract with OpenAI, it’ll cover their costs to run ChatGPT for several years. I don’t expect any AI-related subscriptions from Apple. It will be all about selling NEW hardware to run on-device AI (whether or not older hardware is actually a major limiting factor). The real key to the advertising will be that it’s: “AI on iPhone”*
*AI features only available on iPhone 15 or newer
Automatic SuperCycle™️
🥱🥱🥱
Many people have begun to discover that ‘AI’ is really just a glorified Google search that gives you search results in a presentable format. This is so stupid, I can’t believe it’s Apple. This company is creatively and utility-wise, dead as a doornail. Their modern engineers and designers might as well be using crayons. Pfft. Seriously: who cares? This is the latest misnomered Silicon Valley fad, and it is only and precisely what I stated. Wonder now why all those web 2.0 companies sent you surveys and wanted your data as a term of the TOS? Do you understand how sublimely idiotic that was, given the limitations of technology, and in a world that is perfectly non-objective?
I would love for someone, anyone from the millennial and downward cohorts to do anything but co-opt, regurgitate, or repackage. It’s like the creative and legitimately innovative parts of their brains have been dissolved or were never there in the first place. All ‘AI’ is, is Alta Vista cutting out the intermediate steps for you, and depriving you of the nuance and relevance you would have discovered independently as it related to what you were looking for, and Alta Vista goes back nigh on 30 years. Innovation my backside. Biggest Ponzi scheme in decades, but one that has been going on since F***erburg.
Guess that makes sense for the generations that couldn’t make an independent decision if their actual lives depended on it. It’s all just ‘too hard.’ 🙄🙄 Pfft. Spare me. Both the new versions of iOS and MacOS sound like they are moving even further toward being fairly useless to people that actually work and have a creative bone in their body.
Thanks so much for excreting four overwrought paragraphs just to tell us you don’t understand the first thing about generative AI.
Genius, please don’t keep us in suspense! All that hot air must have at least one or two superior ideas hiding behind it? You know it all obviously.
Brutal Truth kinda nailed it. AI does so much more than glorified searching, but that’s what current advertising has boiled it down too for the mass adoption crowd.
In other words Apple has nothing but paying companies like open AI to license their services to Apple. Tim’s Apple fails again. And another win for Nvidia that powers open AI’s data centers. Buy Nvidia before the 10:1 stock split
Clarification on this statement please (anyone) ?
“Most of the on-device features will be supported by iPhone, iPad and Mac chips released in the last year or so.”
So…
Does that mean the M1 Chip in Mac Mini?
Does that mean the chip in iPhone 15?
Does that mean the chip in Apple Watch Ultra II?
Or does that mean I’ll have to upgrade everything in those my current devices in order to use Apple’s AI ?
… perhaps getting a version of SIRI that locates where a specific area code is and doesn’t answer “I found this on the Web…”
Thanks.