Cook 'incredibly excited' about generative AI coming to Apple gear later in 2024

I love how Cook had to keep explicitly mentioning AI, ML, etc. for all of the stupid ChatGPT enamored folks that don’t understand how much AI is baked into Apple products and software and how Apple Si has AI/ML supporting GPU and Neural Engine cores have been expanding year after year.

omasou said:

I love how Cook had to keep explicitly mentioning AI, ML, etc. for all of the stupid ChatGPT enamored folks that don’t understand how much AI is baked into Apple products and software and how Apple Si has AI/ML supporting GPU and Neural Engine cores have been expanding year after year.

Right? When the folks say “But but but Apple is behind!” I’m always like…wut? Chat bots? Search engines? Letter writing wizards? Why do those things matter to anyone, let alone to Apple customers?

Considering how badly Apple has fumbled voice assistant technology--Siri remains, as ever, the dumbest student in the class--I have concerns about how well it will deploy advanced AI capabilities. I am all-in on Apple devices EXCEPT when it comes smart speakers and voice-controlled lights and appliances. Part of the reason is because Siri continues to be frustratingly and profoundly stupid--but mainly, it's because Alexa and Google are in everything and Siri is not. Siri debuted as an iOS app 14 years ago this month. Then Apple bought the company that developed Siri just two months later. Meanwhile, Amazon wouldn't debut Alexa for another 4.5 years--but it totally blew away Siri capabilities when it hit the market. How Apple frittered away a years-long head start in voice assistant technology is beyond me, but they did and Alexa became ubiquitous.

I think Tim said what he had to say today for the benefit of Wall Street because Apple is simply not in the conversation when it comes to AI... except to ask, "Where is Apple in all of this?" which is not the question you want raised. The lack of specifics in what he said did not inspire confidence that there are specifics to tout--I guess he's hoping to have some by WWDC in June. And you can blah, blah, blah all you want about how much AI is already in Apple products, but it doesn't change the fact that, as a company, they are not in the AI conversation like MSFT, NVDA, GOOG, META, etc. 

As a creative professional--you know, a prime target market for Apple--AI is already having a profound and beneficial effect on my work flow. And none of the tools I'm currently using are connected to Apple in any way. 

charlesn said:

Considering how badly Apple has fumbled voice assistant capabilities--Siri remains, as ever, the dumbest student in the class--I have concerns about how well it will deploy advanced AI capabilities. I am all-in on Apple devices EXCEPT when it comes smart speakers and voice-controlled lights and appliances. Part of the reason is because Siri continues to be frustratingly and profoundly stupid--but mainly, it's because Alexa and Google are in everything and Siri is not. 

I think Tim said what he had to say today for the benefit of Wall Street because Apple is simply not in the conversation when it comes to AI... except to ask, "Where is Apple in all of this?" which is not the question you want raised. The lack of specifics in what he said did not inspire confidence--I guess he's hoping to have some meat on the bones by WWDC in June. And you can blah, blah, blah all you want about how much AI is already in Apple products, but it doesn't change the fact that, as a company, they are not in the AI conversation like MSFT, NVDA, GOOG, META, etc. 

Yeah if you look at Siri as Apple’s AI effort you are wright, except Siri was never’s Apple AI effort, it was pre AI/ML era created and still is. If you see ChatGPT as smart, well until recently it could not answer a simple reasoning question like if it take 4 hours for a towel to dry outside in the sun how long does it take to dry 20, it did 4x20, just know they programmed that out to give the correct answer … (still hard to solve by AI so they are just faking the answer)

AI euh excuse me ML is being backed into every product since 2017 from a HW perspective, and FaceID was the real visible use of AI/ML of Apple, but to name just a few things that Apple has used ML more and more. The Translate App that is really fast and completely offline supporting dozens of Languages, recognizing objects and people in photo’s you can look up in your library. All the features that people with disabilities use, are almost all based on AI/ML. The dictation tool that works way better than Siri by the way, AI/ML, The autocorrect / suggestion, finally uses AI/ML and is finally descent … Centerstage … etc etc etc … So all in all things I use daily, while I used ChatGPT in the beginning for fun, I stopped using it, the initial high and wow has gone and some meh feeling took over. Yes for coding it has potential or for some very niche use cases it could be great, replacing jobs, but do we really want to replace humans buy a chatbot …

All I want to know is whether Apple's version will give them access to my AI searches, (and to restrict them) or whether everything is done "on device." Is Apple going to deviate from its privacy-centric approach?