AI is all the hype currently. And while Google, Amazon and Microsoft have gone all-in on generative AI, Apple has not made any notable announcements.
This could change next year, as the Cupertino giant is working on adding several AI features to iOS 18.
Apple is heavily focusing on its AI efforts
In the latest edition of the Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman has spilled the beans on Apple’s AI efforts. He says there’s an “intense and widespread endeavors” going on inside Apple to catch up to the competition in the AI space. A source reportedly said, “there’s a lot of anxiety about this and it’s considered a pretty big miss internally.”
John Giannandrea and Craig Federighi, the SVP of AI and software engineering, are spearheading Apple’s AI efforts. Referred to as “executive sponsors,” Giannandrea is helping build the underlying tech for the new AI system. The team he is overseeing will revamp Siri to integrate with AI deeply. While the report says the technology could be ready by next year, Apple might take longer to bring AI features to its other products.
Craig Federighi’s team is working on adding AI to iOS 18, which will run on Apple’s large language model (LLM). This should help improve Siri and deliver auto-complete suggestions in the Messages app, as seen in Google Messages on Android.
Apple could spend $1 billion annually on AI
Eddy Cue is helping the two executives bring AI to as many system apps as possible. This includes Apple Music, Pages, Keynote, and other productivity apps. The three of them are on track to spend about $1 billion annually on AI efforts.
Besides Siri, Apple is also looking to add generative AI into Xcode to help speed up the workflow of app developers.
Reports from July 2023 indicated Apple was working on AppleGPT to take on ChatGPT. The generative AI chatbot is currently being used internally in the company. It is clear that generative AI is going to play a huge role in our daily lives, and Apple missing this train could put it at a significant disadvantage to its competitors.
