Tim Cook acknowledges that Apple is not the first in artificial intelligence, but says “It’s about being the best”
Ricky Bobby from the 2006 movie Talladega Nights will find that Apple’s delayed launch of Apple Intelligence is a sure sign of failure. “If you’re not first, you’re last,” he told Apple’s CEO Tim Cook. Meanwhile, Cook realizes that his company will not lead in artificial intelligence first, but every time the CEO says it takes longer to cook Apple Intelligence, the candy becomes sweeter in the end.
Compared to the competition on the Android operating system, the expected initial launch on October 28 will be just that. Google’s Gemini already has capabilities for summarizing and generating texts through artificial intelligence, as well as Apple’s Image Playground for creating artificial intelligence images, and most importantly, Siri integration that can work between apps on behalf of users has no official launch date. Hints from Mark Gurman, an Apple expert at Bloomberg, suggest that we may see these features in a few months, although in all likelihood, Siri will not reach its best until 2025.
Cook told The Wall Street Journal in an interview on Monday, “We were not the first to do intelligence.” “But we did it in a way we believe is best for the customer.”
We still need to test Apple Intelligence to its full glory. ChatGPT and Gemini products are already available, and we have seen some improvements alongside many downsides. However, with Apple integrating its own artificial intelligence, there are already concerning signs. Gurman wrote in his recent Power On newsletter that Apple internally believes its artificial intelligence “lags industry leaders by over two years.” An internal study found that Siri was 25% less accurate than ChatGPT. According to a Bloomberg writer, OpenAI’s chatbot can answer additional questions by 30%.
Apple plans to integrate ChatGPT on users’ iPhones (or at least all iPhone 16s and 15 Pro and the latest iPad devices, including the upcoming 2024 Air, Pro, and mini). It will be locked behind Apple’s security device, and users will need to grant permission before using any of its announced generative features.
Apple may not need to be the first. Having the back-end has its advantages. You can see how other companies fail and then customize your program for the better. And even then, the initial launch will seem like it has happened before. You can already access the early prototype of Apple Intelligence through the beta version of iOS 18.1. In short, features of artificial intelligence like text recognition tools can either check, rewrite, or summarize texts using artificial intelligence. Other initial features of Apple Intelligence include the potential for “priority notifications” to place the most urgent notifications, like meetings or important text messages, at the top. Artificial intelligence can also summarize texts in notes or phone calls.
How useful are text summaries? Cook recently said he has started using them in his emails, saving him time “here and there.” If it saves you a few minutes every day, it might save you a few hours or days over a month. I ask why I write a long detailed email if I know my manager won’t read it. However, for the CEO of Apple, he claims, “It has changed my life.”
As someone who has used artificial intelligence in various roles over the past few years, I have a very different perspective. Text summaries can be useful at times, but as a journalist, I find the important parts are in the details. I can’t ask artificial intelligence to look up the product summaries for the next iPad I’m reviewing if something is missing. I may ask artificial intelligence to discover the specs of an old iPhone for a feature I’m working on, but I still need to double-check its work because artificial intelligence may be wrong, and you won’t be sure where it pulls data from.
The less said about the text created by artificial intelligence, the better. However, Apple’s CEO told The Wall Street Journal that artificial intelligence will change how users spend time on their phones completely. He believes it will change how users operate their phones.
Apple has faced major mistakes. Remember the butterfly keyboards? It’s like any other major company that has been around for the past fifty years. Sometimes, mistakes happen, but Apple is unique in never acknowledging these failures. In the interview, Cook presented himself as having a positive outlook. He said the company “doesn’t aim to get something first… If you talk to 100 people, 100 of them will tell you: It’s about being the best.”
The interview did not critically examine the CEO’s logic. Cook is a salesperson, first and foremost. Despite the CEO’s talk, Apple has lagged behind in artificial intelligence. It did not announce its first models of artificial intelligence until December 2023. An unnamed worker within Apple told Gurman last year that it was “a huge failure internally.”
But again, we may not need Apple’s intelligence as much as ChatGPT’s capabilities. The ideal scenario is to have an artificial intelligence “agent” working on the device. It should be able to take information between apps, like setting a calendar reminder based on text (something Gemini already does). The first company to reach this goal will have struck gold; organized text summaries are darned.
