| | | Apple’s Product Event Next Week Could Highlight AI, New iPhone Apple teased a product event for Sept. 9, and investors immediately set their sights on an iPhone 17 plus updates on the device-maker’s artificial intelligence efforts. CEO Tim Cook hyped the “awe dropping” event in a social media post. But AI news could be disappointing.
- Already, Apple’s AI software rollout has been slow to catch investor enthusiasm. iPhone users are impatient for an updated Siri chatbot. Apple has said it expects to launch a more personalized Siri next year.
- Bloomberg has reported that Apple approached Alphabet’s Google Gemini to explore building a custom AI model to be the foundation of the new Siri. Richard Windsor, founder of Radio Free Mobile, said working with Google to revamp Siri could erode Apple’s brand image and data security emphasis.
- Apple’s rigorous privacy policies, a key differentiating factor for its brand, are now making it difficult to train large-language models, which process large swaths of data. If Apple keeps Siri as is, it keeps its brand value but would not be able to compete with Google’s Android phones, Windsor said.
- Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes isn’t as worried about Apple’s AI standing. “Luckily for Apple, its iPhone base doesn’t seem to care about the Siri/AI delays, and we see no evidence of real switching,” he wrote earlier this month, MarketWatch reported.
What’s Next: Windsor said the best path forward for Apple to preserve data privacy and enhance its AI capabilities would be to pursue an acquisition of an existing AI platform. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Apple was holding internal talks to purchase the AI start-up Perplexity.
— Angela Palumbo and Janet H. Cho |
|
