Steve Jobs’ former retail chief Ron Johnson believes Apple is poised to dominate artificial intelligence, largely because the iPhone will be the main device where most people experience it — and the company is partnering smartly to deliver a unique experience. Yet as Apple prepares to unveil a major Siri overhaul at its developer conference next week, built on Google’s Gemini technology, the real test will be whether it can finally transform its long-criticized chatbot into a capable, personalized AI assistant that leverages the company’s vast device and user-data advantages.
Rolfe Winkler for The Wall Street Journal:
The question is whether the new Siri, and other operating-system updates, set Apple on a path to bring generative AI to the masses, harnessing the company’s formidable assets that, paradoxically, give it pole position to dominate the market even though it is years behind rivals.
“I think Apple is going to win on AI,” said Ron Johnson, Apple’s retail chief under Steve Jobs. “The phone is the primary device on which people will use AI. And Apple is partnering with the right people to bring a unique AI experience to the phone.””
Today, most consumers have only experienced AI as a more sophisticated online search. But the explosion of Anthropic’s business, powered by professionals who use Claude to complete tasks, points to the AI future for consumers, too: when smartphones will act as sophisticated assistants that do something similar.
A smartphone might book restaurant reservations on its own because it has users’ calendars and knows their dietary restrictions. It could hail a ride because it knows the user’s home address and stores credit-card information. Apps themselves might be abstracted away as smartphone agents call online services directly on behalf of their users.
In a recent investor note, Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan argued that Apple could become the marketplace for app actions. Apps now compete for downloads and screen time. Someday they might compete to be the service that smartphone agents call on. If Uber Technologies wants to be pinged by Siri for ride requests, for instance, it will likely have to pay Apple a hefty fee.
“The challenge that stands starkly in front of Apple is its ability to turn its (imagined?) Apple Intelligence capabilities into a product or service that people will actually use,” wrote MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett in an investor note.
Indeed, none of Apple’s advantages will matter if Apple can’t deliver competent AI to guide iPhone users through this new world.
MacDailyNews Take: If our little birdies are to be believed, one of whom told us that iPhoneOS would be renamed iOS six months before Apple did exactly that, on Monday, we are finally going to get to see an all-new LLM Siri that actually works, isn’t just a marketing video, and will be in iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and HomePod users’ hands as a beta very soon and released widely to the public in just a few short months!
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