Apple is building new AI photo editing tools to introduce with its next major software updates this fall, and these won’t be the only AI tools and services it wants to talk about at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in a few weeks’ time.
While it is correct to say Apple has had setbacks in AI development, it has also had successes. Was it ready for the generative AI (genAI) juggernaut? Probably not, nor has it successfully developed its own response in-house. Is Apple’s platform ready for AI? Indisputably, with the power and performance across all its hardware products to run AI on the edge, in the cloud, and as-a-service. Right now, Apple doesn’t offer the world’s best AI services, but does offer the world’s best platform on which to run them.
Given you can’t have one without the other, no matter how you slice and dice it, Apple has therefore seen partial success in AI. Now, it just needs to add the software and the services, about which we’ll find out much more in June.
What
AirPods Pro 3 | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Apple's rumored AirPods with cameras are nearing a stage where the company will test early mass production, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports. Currently, Apple testers are "actively using" prototypes that are in the design validation test stage, which is one step before the production validation test stage.
The AirPods' cameras "aren't designed" to snap photos or video but instead can take in "visual information in low resolution" that users can query Siri about, like asking the AI assistant what they should cook with the ingredients they have in front of them, according to Gurman. They may also use the cameras to help with things like turn-b …
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Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) takes place in just a few weeks. Everyone expects the company to explain its approach to AI deployment on its platforms. With that in mind, here’s what several months of speculation suggest Apple will announce, though the details remain to be disclosed.
Apple is investing billions of dollars in these plans; R&D spending reached 10.3% of revenue in the second quarter, up from 7.6% in Q1. Given Apple’s accelerating revenue, on a dollar basis this means the company’s R&D spend is up 34% from a year ago.
“We believe AI is a really important investment area for Apple, and we’re going to be doing that incrementally on top of what we normally invest in our product roadmap,” said Apple CFO Kevan Parekh during Apple’s latest fiscal call. (AI isn’t Apple’s only spending target, either.)
While the billions Apple is investing are dwarfed by the huge infrastructure investments made by pure AI players, Apple’s infrastructure already exists — in the form
Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging it misled consumers about the AI capabilities of the iPhone 15 and 16. The complaint claimed Apple exaggerated the readiness and functionality of Apple Intelligence features, particularly an upgraded Siri, influencing purchase decisions with capabilities that were incomplete or delayed. Without […]
The mishaps around Apple Intelligence have gone beyond denting Apple’s reputation – they have also cost the company $250 million in damages over smarter Siri delays.
Think back to the original introduction of Apple Intelligence and you might recall a promotional video that explained how a new and smarter Siri would act as your contextually-smart AI companion, helping you get things done. Almost two years later, that smarter Siri still hasn’t shipped — and while Apple has made major changes in management, AI strategy, and approach, this contextual companion isn’t now expected until later this year.
Hopefully.
Apple Intelligence can be seen as a Maps-launch style debacle on the part of the company. (Apple even had to deny that the video presentation for those features shown at WWDC 2024 (no longer officially available) was made up.)
Apple Intelligence’s $250M punishment
The entire affair left some iPhone users unhappy, so they launched a class action lawsuit against the company for dela
Settlement, which includes no admission of wrongdoing, covers roughly 36m eligible devices in class-action lawsuit
Apple on Tuesday agreed to pay $250m to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of misleading millions of iPhone buyers by falsely touting artificial intelligence capabilities for its Siri voice assistant in late 2024.
Plaintiffs accused the California tech giant of having “promoted AI capabilities that did not exist at the time, do not exist now, and will not exist for two or more years” in order to boost iPhone sales, according to the suit. Apple’s more “personalized” version of Siri still has not been fully released despite its announcement nearly two years ago.
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