They had announced it as one of the steps of giants of the industry: the arrival of an AI that would be as iconic as Siri, last year, with the iPhone 16. But what Apple achieved were demands for fraudulent advertising. Basically for stating that his phone could do things that he was not able.
Since then, and seeing the evolution of the AI used by Samsung on its devices, the advances of Chatgpt, Gemini and Deepseek, It is obvious that Apple can no longer use laurels as a nap excuse.
Apple’s passivity in regards to numerous factors. One of them has to do with Your focus on user privacy, which limits the data available to train AI models.
While Apple It has a base of 2,350 million active devices (between phones, smart watches, tablets and computers), which allows access to a huge amount of information (at least equal to competition), the reality is that Apple is much more strict than the rest when allowing their engineers to access customer data… although these do not identify with the user, but with the information you are looking for in the network, the use of devices and their location, among others. That is to say: it is only known that “someone” with an Apple Watch has used it to pay a dinner in Madrid. Or that another “someone” has reserved flights to the Caribbean, through an iPad.
But there are more obstacles. Apple has an almost irrational preference for the processing on the devicewhich slows development compared to based systems In the cloud. If we add to that an endogamic and complex ecosystem in the collaborations …
The companyneitherto alsoandn faces crYoTicas by have a rhythm of innovationeithernmtos slowinternal debates about CeitherI say open and a hardware -centered development dependence instead of a deep integration of AI in its entire ecosystem.
In part, everything goes back to 2018 when Apple signed John Giannandrea, from Google, to be its director of AI. Giannandrea He had directed Google’s search groups and AI, which led to the progress in photos, translator and Gmail. The objective was clear: to become a power of AI. But it didn’t happen. Nor does it have perspectives to do so in the short term.
Until now, Apple has dedicated considerable resources to develop an AI that matches its famebut has obtained disappointing results for users.
Members of the Siri group of Apple, stated, in an interview, that the former team leader, Robby Walker, had underestimated the company’s problems: “There are hundreds of errors right now. It’s like a logic game: you correct a problem and three more appear ”.
And this is the first time that happens to Apple. In the past, he had known how to adapt the innovations of many of his products (MP3, smart watches, tablets …) to its characteristic design and ecosystem. The rhythm to which these technologies advanced, allowed him to go a bit behind waiting for his demand to be confirmed.
Now, that strategy is no longer useful: The AI advances much faster than Apple can develop it And how much more time he invests, further back he stays. It’s like trying to climb a mud slope that gets more wet with each attempt.
Apple is at a crossroads. It is the second time in its history (the first was Siri) that a software (to call it somehow) It is more important than any of its devices. And, until now, it does not have a good perspective.