CEO Tim Cook is very enthusiastic about the artificial intelligence features coming to iPhone, Mac and iPad. On Thursday, he spoke glowingly about Apple’s unique advantages in this area, and talked about the “transformative power and promise of AI.”
iOS 18, macOS 15 and iPadOS 18 are all expected to include new AI features when they launch this autumn.
Tim Cook talks up Apple’s AI advantages
Apple has yet to make any significant AI announcements, even as rivals like Microsoft, Google and Samsung have rushed products to users. The result has been accusations that the iPhone-maker missed the boat.
Thursday’s call with analysts and investors after announcing quarterly earnings was an opportunity for Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri to reassure the world that Apple is all in on AI.
Not waiting for a question from an analyst, Cook started the call by saying:
“We believe in the transformative power and promise of AI. And we believe we have advantages that will differentiate us in this new era, including Apple’s unique combination of seamless hardware, software and services integration, groundbreaking Apple silicon, with our industry-leading neural engines, and our unwavering focus on privacy, which underpins everything we create.”
During the call, there were frequent questions about AI. In response to one of these, Maestri said:
“We are obviously very excited about the opportunity with Gen AI. We obviously are pushing very hard on innovation on every front and we’ve been doing that for many, many years. Just during the last five years, we spent more than $100 billion in research and development.”
To be clear, the CFO didn’t say that $100 billion had gone into AI research. That’s the company’s R&D total.
Be patient a little longer
Analysts and representatives of institutional investors kept trying to pry specifics about Apple’s AI plans out of the two executives, but they stayed deliberately vague.
In response to one such attempt, Cook said:
“I don’t want to get in front of our announcements, obviously. I would just say that we we see generative AI as a very key opportunity across our products. And we believe that we have advantages that set us apart there. And so and we’ll be talking more about it and as we go through the weeks ahead.”
Apple will almost certainly get very specific about the plans for artificial intelligence features coming in iOS 18, macOS 15 and iPadOS 18 at WWDC24. AI is likely to be a major focus of the company’s developer conference in June, including major changes to all the standard iPhone apps.
In addition, there’s the possibility that there might be a preview of some AI upgrades at the May 7 “Let Loose” product launch event. New iPad models are reportedly on the docket, and Apple might be ready to talk about how well they’ll run new artificial intelligence features in iPadOS 18.
