Apple's AI Strategy

Author: Huang Yu

Source: Hard AI

Since the era of the iPhone 4, Apple, which has always led the trend of smartphones, has also fallen behind in the AI arms race this time.

Following the principle of "if you can't beat them, join them," Apple has reached an agreement with OpenAI. It will integrate OpenAI's generative AI technology into the underlying technology of iOS 18 to comprehensively upgrade Siri's conversational experience.

According to well-known tech journalist Mark Gurman, Apple will unveil an improved Siri at the WWDC conference on June 10. The new Siri will have stronger conversational abilities and broader applications, transforming Siri into a chat assistant that can handle multiple questions at once, rather than just one at a time.

In the future, Apple's expectation for Siri is for it to become a "self-intelligent" assistant that can assist users in various aspects of daily life.

Gurman also added that Apple's AI strategy will start with chatbots and gradually expand to search engines, software, hardware updates, and more.

Apple's Transition to AI is a Result of Being "Forced"

The breakthrough point of Apple's AI strategy this time is likely the long-teased Apple voice assistant, Siri.

Do you remember when Apple unexpectedly canceled the Apple Car earlier this year?

This was to prepare in advance for the evolution of Siri. After ceasing car production, Apple transferred most engineers to the AI team to focus on major initiatives. Reports suggest that Apple is spending millions of dollars daily to upgrade Siri, aiming to transform the "old child" Siri, which has been around for over a decade, into its flagship AI product.

Moreover, Apple is also in negotiations with Google and may introduce Gemini to further enhance Siri, although the agreement has not been finalized.

Apple's recent frequent moves towards AI transformation are all due to the immense pressure from competitors.

Especially with OpenAI and Google, who are currently in the top tier of AI, both recently updating their strongest AI products. OpenAI introduced GPT-4o last week, which has evolved to the point of being able to engage in human-like conversations, prepare users for job interviews, and even make sarcastic remarks, which is quite impressive.

At Google's Google I/O developer conference last week, they upgraded their AI model Gemini and deeply integrated AI into the search engine, introducing features such as AI-generated summaries, advanced planning, and video scanning search.

In comparison, Apple is somewhat at a loss in the field of AI. Apart from the iPad Pro launched in early May (equipped with the M4 chip with an NPU neural network engine), Apple's progress can be considered slow.

This has put immense pressure on Apple CEO Tim Cook. If Apple wants to catch up with its competitors in this wave of AI competition, it must change its strategy Apart from chatbots, Apple's AI strategy also needs to consider search engines and the speed of software and hardware updates.

However, cooperating with competitors on AI is just a temporary measure for Apple.

Gurman pointed out that in order to go further in the AI wave, Apple ultimately needs to break away from collaboration and focus on building its own AI chatbots, deeply integrating them into its products, increasing the speed of technological iteration, and then have the opportunity to overtake in the curve.

Although with Apple's current technology, it is not yet able to quickly build its own chatbots, and Apple executives are also afraid that hastily built chatbots will encounter various bugs, just like Google's first launch of Gemini, which would damage Apple's reputation.

The good news is that for Apple, which is wealthy, has talent, and has an ecological platform advantage, it has a strong backing.

Gurman stated that next, Apple's focus in AI strategy will be fully concentrated on Siri, online search, system update speed, and hardware updates.

For years, Apple has been wanting to build its own search engine, one with user privacy protection features, rather than like Google or Bing search engines, but the cost of doing so would be high, and it would directly compete with Google, which has already focused on AI search.

Starting in 2022, Google has been paying Apple billions of dollars each year, making Google the default search engine on Apple's Safari browser, allowing Apple to easily earn this licensing fee, thereby reducing the motivation to build an independent search engine.

Now, the rapid development of AI is forcing Apple to make more changes, because in the long run, Apple having its own AI search engine will have more development potential, it just depends on Apple's next choice.

Lastly, there is the issue of system update speed. Apple basically updates the iOS system once a year, but with AI developing so quickly, the annual update cycle seems too slow.

Gurman believes that if Apple wants to catch up with the top tier of AI, it needs to accelerate the integration of generative AI technology into the update speed of the iOS system, but currently Apple's focus does not seem to be on speeding up system updates.

Fortunately, Apple is quite focused on hardware upgrades. Earlier this month, Apple launched a new iPad Pro with the M4 chip, a major highlight of the M4 being the NPU (Neural Processing Unit). Apple expects that by 2025, the M4 chip will be integrated into every Mac product, upgrading the product line comprehensively. In September of this year, the new iPhone 16 Pro will also achieve another leap in chip technology.

Apple's transition to AI still has a long way to go.

Just as Steve Jobs resisted various pressures to launch the iPhone 4 back then, now the pressure is on Tim Cook. Can he seize the AI era that belongs to Apple?