In his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Apple was caught off guard by the sudden surge in sales of generative AI tools in this year. But they are working hard to catch up with Apple senior vice presidents Craig Federighi, John Giannandrea and Eddie Cue, who are responsible for integrating artificial intelligence features into Apple products and services.
This will include various new AI features in iOS 18, such as smarter reply suggestions in Messages. Cue is looking to include features like AI-generated playlists in Apple Music and is exploring how generative AI can be used in Apple's productivity apps like Pages and Keynote. Giannandrea's team is working on a new, smarter version of Siri, which should be ready to debut next year.
Gourmet says, embracing Artificial Intelligence in features End users are now one of Apple's main targets as it strives to catch up with competitors such as OpenAI, Google and Microsoft. Thus, Apple is going to spend about $1 billion a year on artificial intelligence research and product development.
In addition to new iOS 18 and Siri features, Apple is also looking at ways to improve the developer experience with AI-enhanced features in Xcode. This will likely include advanced code completion similar to what Github Copilot offers. The company is also looking at ways to optimize its internal AppleCare tools with artificial intelligence.
There is apparently some internal tension over whether these features should be based on or outsourced to artificial intelligence neural network models running on the device via Apple’s Cloud Services. Running on a device provides maximum privacy, but large language models running on a server farm provide a much more complex experience. Gurman says Apple will likely decide on a customized approach, with some features running entirely on the device and others relying on a cloud server.
