Apple's pause on the AI race: What to know
Apple's (AAPL) artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions seem to have been put on pause, with no major AI announcements expected at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference next week.
Yahoo Finance Technology Editor Dan Howley explains that Apple is focusing more on OS improvements and opening AI tools to developers rather than unveiling breakthrough AI features.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Catalysts here.
A year after Apple announced its foray into the AI space, investors aren't expecting much in terms of new AI announcements from the company at next week's WWDC. Tech editor Dan Howley joining us here with more. Dan, we were just talking about your preparations for the big trip. Not expecting a ton of AI headlines though from Apple. Why is that?
Yeah, no, uh this is kind of the the year, kind of it's taking a step back from from AI a bit, just because we had the big kind of announcements about Apple intelligence last year, and it hasn't all panned out the way it seemingly was supposed to. Uh, the new Siri with generative AI nowhere in sight yet. We don't know when that's going to be available. Apple said it's it's delayed because they still have more work to do. The tools that they have, the writing tools, things like that, the image kind of clean up features, those are kind of par for the course now when it comes to generative AI. It's nothing really, you know, mind-blowing, and it it seems this year it's just going to be more about changing up the operating systems, or at least improving them, rather than adding AI. So this is according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Uh there's going to be updates to all the operating systems as far as design. Uh when, uh, but that means is it'll look more like Vision OS, which is the operating system that powers the Vision Pro. Uh we all have one of those, by the way, right? $3,500 Vision Pro. Uh they'll also change the names of the operating systems. Uh they're opening up their third-party AI models to developers. So that may be something that gets people excited about AI, just knowing that Apple at least is trying there to to get more developers in and see them develop more apps. Uh and then there's there's other features like uh uh live translation on AirPods and a battery charging feature uh that that's AI-based. But, you know, it seems to me this is, you know, this is a moment where it's it's almost a pause on Apple being big and ambitious when it comes to AI. Kind of like, okay, we we did that last year. Uh we're still waiting on the, you know, the outcome of that. Uh let's hit you with some other stuff in the meantime. And, you know, it's it's a question of where does that leave Apple? Because Google just had their IO conference, showed off a slew of new AI features. Microsoft just had their build conference, same thing there. Apple, this is their developer conference. They're going to have to prove that they have what it takes to really kind of keep up.
Well, also, what I wanted to talk to you about is Johnny Ive's open AI device as well, and how much that potentially raises the bar for Apple this coming week in terms of potential competition out there.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting, right? It's we have no idea what this device is going to be, what it looks like. Um, you know, there have been other devices that are based on generative AI technologies, but they've been frankly flops. Uh there was the Rabbit R1, the Humane pin. Obviously, uh HP kind of sucked up Humane in the technology there. I think that the fact that Johnny Ive, uh obviously working on it with Sam Altman, adds, uh more cachet to it that that the others necessarily didn't have. Um, I don't know if that means it's an existential threat to something like the iPhone, but it certainly is a threat to Apple, just because of the, you know, the prowess of Johnny Ive and his design capabilities. Um, you know, and I I think that just, again, adds to that pressure that Apple is under to deliver something on the AI side of things, right? I mean, they they talk up about how their chips can can handle AI. Uh they they talk up the AI features that they've added, Animoji, but that's not really stuff that's going to get people out to buy any phones or or devices. I will say nothing out there is worth really buying right now based solely on the generative AI capabilities that they have, right? You know, new laptops from Microsoft, they have gen AI capabilities. But you would buy them because they're better laptops, you know, they the Qualcomm chips in them, that's really good. That's that's matching up with what what Apple has to offer as far as capabilities with the Macs. Google's phones are great, obviously Samsung's phones are great. They have AI. Nothing in it really says, "Hey, go out and buy this phone because of these AI features." So, you know, Apple is behind, but it's not behind to the detriment of sales.
Really great overview as always, Dan. We're excited to chat with you next week when you're over at WWDC. So thank you so much and safe travels. Of course, yes, exactly, exactly.
Always a pleasure. Thank you.
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