Apple's AI announcements were all about AI 'for the rest of us...
In the end, Apple’s highly anticipated AI announcements were very, well, Apple-y. Apple finally announced Apple Intelligence, which Apple’s Tim Cook touted will be “personal, powerful, and private” and integrated across Apple’s app and hardware ecosystem. Apple has always been all about being a protective “walled garden” that provides comprehensive security measures but also plenty of restrictions for users, and Apple Intelligence will be no different. But it is that very personal context of the user within the Apple landscape, combined with the power of generative AI, that makes Apple Intelligence something perhaps only Apple could really do.
The "AI for the rest of us"
Apple has not been first, or anywhere near the cutting edge of generative AI, but it is betting on something else: an AI for the rest of us”—for the billions of users who don’t care about models or APIs or datasets or GPUs or devices or the potential for artificial general intelligence (AGI). That is, the “normies”—as those in the tech industry like to call them—who simply want AI that is easy, useful, protective of privacy, and just works.
The laundry list of features Apple executives promised to roll out across iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS devices was long. Siri is getting an upgrade that makes the assistant “natural, more contextually relevant, and more personal.” There will be new systemwide writing tools in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, as well as new ways for AI to help prioritize everything from messages to notifications. The fun factor is well-represented as well, with on-device AI image creation and the fittingly named Genmojis, which let users create custom emojis on the fly. 
Apple’s Approach
Unlike Google and Meta’s throw-everything-at-the-wall approach to integrating generative AI into their products, Apple is putting a carefully designed layer of gen AI on top of its operating system. The rebranding of AI as Apple Intelligence takes a technology consumers have heard and read about for more than a year and serves it up as something that’s soothingly safe and secure.
Of course, Big Tech demos are notorious for big announcements that don’t always deliver. The tech world is in a fierce battle to see which company will be able to take AI and turn it into the industry’s next game-changer. Whether that is Apple or not remains to be seen, but the elegant simplicity of the Apple Intelligence announcements certainly puts Google, Meta, Amazon, and, yes, OpenAI on notice.
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