Apple expected to enter AI race with ambitions to overtake the early leaders
Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference on Monday is expected to herald the company’s move into generative artificial intelligence, arriving late in a technological frontier expected to be as revolutionary as the invention of the iPhone.
The widely expected display of AI to be embedded in the iPhone and other Apple products will be the highlight of an event that traditionally previews the next version of the software powering the company’s hardware lineup.
And Apple’s next generation of software is expected to be packed with AI features that will likely make the often clumsy virtual assistant Siri smarter, and make photo, music, texting (and possibly even on-the-fly emojis) more productive and productive. will make. entertaining experience.
True to its secretive nature, Apple provided no advance details about Monday’s event at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.
But CEO Tim Cook has dropped strong hints in the first few months that Apple is about to unveil its big plans to enter a space that has fueled an industry boom over the past 18 months.
AI mania is the main reason Nvidia, the dominant maker of the chips that underpin the technology, has seen its market value soar from about $300 billion at the end of 2022 to about $3 trillion. This rapid ride allowed Nvidia to briefly overtake Apple last week as the second most valuable company in the US. Microsoft also eclipsed the iPhone maker earlier this year on the strength of its so-far successful push into AI.
But analysts are increasingly concerned that Apple is falling too far behind in the rapidly changing AI space, a concern that has been exacerbated by a unusually prolonged breakdown in the company’s turnover. Both Googling And Samsung have already released smartphone models that tout AI features as their main attractions.
That’s why analysts like Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives see Monday’s conference as a potential springboard that catapults Apple into another robust phase of growth. Ives believes that bringing more AI into the iPhone, iPad and Mac computer will translate into an additional $450 billion to $600 billion in market value for Apple.
Monday’s conference “represents the most important event for Apple in more than a decade as it focuses on the push to bring a generative AI stack of technology to developers and consumers,” Ives wrote in a research note.
Apple could certainly use the boost that AI can provide, especially for its 13-year-old assistant Siri, which Forrester Research Dipanjan Chatterjee now calls a “strangely unhelpful helper.”
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is becoming increasingly chatty – so much so that it recently led to accusations of deliberately copying one piece of AI software, voiced by Scarlett Johansson – and Google gave an example of an AI ‘agent’ last month called Astra who can apparently see and remember things.
In addition to using AI to spruce up Siri, Apple could also partner with OpenAI to bring some elements of ChatGPT to the iPhone, according to a wide range of unconfirmed reports ahead of Monday’s conference.
This will be the second year in a row that Apple has caused a stir at its developer conference by using it to make its entry into a trendy form of technology that other companies had already adopted.
Apple offered this last year an early look at its mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, which was only released early this year and carried a $3,500 price tag, which was a major barrier to gaining much traction. Nevertheless, Apple’s push for mixed reality, adapted with a twist that it labels as “spatial computing,” has raised hopes that what is currently a niche technology will grow into a huge market.
Some of the optimism comes from The history of Apple of releasing technology later than others and then using streamlined designs and services combined with slick marketing campaigns to overcome the late start and unleash new trends.
“Apple’s early reluctance toward AI was entirely brand-related,” Forrester’s Chatterjee wrote in a preview of the developer conference. “The company has always been obsessed with what its offering did for its customers, rather than how it did it.”
In particular, introducing more AI to the iPhone is likely to raise privacy concerns – an issue where Apple has gone to great lengths to assure its loyal customer base that they can’t look too deeply into their personal lives.
One way Apple can convince consumers that the iPhone won’t be used to spy on them is by using its own chip technology so that most AI functions are handled on the device itself rather than at third-party data centers, too also called ‘the cloud’. Going this route would also help protect Apple’s profit margins, as cloud-based AI technology is much more expensive than running solely on a device.