Apple may be the only tech company getting AI right, actually
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Apple's big developer summit is a Silicon Valley institution. The company has been hosting it every year since 1983, and in more recent years the events have become a fixture of the tech hype machine — a chance for Apple to show off its latest software to investors and the folks who build apps for those products.
Look, they can't all be bangers.
The Worldwide Developers Conference comes around every 12 months, like the Super Bowl or the Oscars. And sometimes it feels like an Important Cultural Moment. Other times it feels like we're just going through the paces and putting on a little show for the fans. This year's WWDC was more the latter. (But it was far from, like, a ''Crash' beats 'Brokeback Mountain''-level disaster.)
The buzziest elements seemed totally fine. Groundbreaking? No. But cute and user-friendly in all the ways we expect from Apple.
Design nerds are twittering about 'Liquid Glass,' iOS's gloopy visual update, but that's about as controversial as this WWDC got. (TL;DR, Liquid Glass is like the T-1000 from 'Terminator II' — it's all shapeshifty and, well, gloopy, compared with the earlier, more rigid design language. If transparent gradients rile you up, maybe it was a spicier WWDC from your vantage point.)
Of course, Apple's investors wanted a bit more pizazz. And in particular, they wanted to see Apple make more progress on the souped-up Siri the company promised at last year's WWDC.
That didn't happen.
In fact, Siri was barely mentioned apart from an early nod from Craig Federighi, Apple's software lead, who said: 'We're continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal… This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year.'
That's the polite way of saying, 'Yeah, yeah, about that AI revolution we promised — we're working on it.'
Apple's stock (AAPL), which is down 17% this year, tumbled a few minutes into Monday's event. Shares fell 1.2% Monday.
Apple certainly brought the hype last year, leading some analysts to predict that the AI upgrades would spur a long awaited 'super-cycle' of iPhone users upgrading their devices.
But a few months on, it became clear that Apple Intelligence, the company's proprietary AI, wasn't ready for prime time. The smarter Siri never arrived, and Apple shelved it indefinitely earlier this year. Apple also had to roll back its AI-powered text message summaries, which were hilarious but ultimately not a great look.
That's because Apple's whole deal is, like, 'our stuff works and people like it' — two qualities that generative AI systems still broadly lack, whether they're made by Apple, Google, Meta or OpenAI.
The problem is that AI tech is not living up to its proponents' biggest promises. And Apple's own researchers are among the most prominent in calling out the limitations. On Friday, Apple dropped a research paper that found that the even some of the industry's most advanced AI models faced a 'complete accuracy collapse' when presented with complex problems.
'At least for the next decade, LLMs (large language models)… will continue (to) have their uses, especially for coding and brainstorming and writing,' wrote Gary Marcus, an academic who's been critical of the AI industry, in a Substack post. 'But anybody who thinks LLMs are a direct route to the sort (of artificial general intelligence) that could fundamentally transform society for the good is kidding themselves.'
And Apple isn't taking the risk (again!) of getting out over its skis on products that aren't 100% reliable.
'Cupertino is playing it safe and close to the vest after the missteps last year,' wrote tech analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities in a note. 'We get the strategy, but… ultimately Cook & Co. may be forced into doing some bigger AI acquisitions to jumpstart this AI strategy.'
That would make sense for Apple, which has a track record of taking existing tech and making it popular. Apple was hardly first to smartwatches or tablets, but it now dominates those categories, my colleague Lisa Eadicicco noted.
'We have a high level of confidence Apple can get this right,' Ives wrote. 'But they have a tight window to figure this out and that will be the focus of investors the next year.'
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