KI and SIRI problems: Why so much depends on Apple Intelligence

Shifting with a better siri, various personnel quarrels and a technique that seems to be able to significantly less than the competition: Apple Intelligence, Apple’s in-house ki system introduced with iOS 18 & Co., can hardly be seen as a success. The question now is how quickly improvements. The suffering seems to be great: several anonymous Apple managers, including apparently also active people, have now given statements compared to US media. In it you draw a picture of a ship that has fallen for a long time – and emphasize how important it is for Apple as a company to fix the problems. After all, numerous products hang on it.

AI is different from a typical Apple product

As it is in the article of the Financial news agency Bloomberg Means, which has been released on the weekend, the iPhone dominance is just as threatened as new technologies from robotics, for example. The “AI for the rest of us” with which Apple Intelligence was initially advertised threatens to become a fiasco. Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi is said to have learned this himself when he had a beta ran on his own iPhone a few weeks before April – then iOS 18.4 with the improved Siri. Important announced functions such as finding driving license by means of language searches from the photo database or other features shown as a prototype last summer simply did not work. “This is a crisis,” said a member from Apple’s AI team Bloomberg. Another employee said it was like a falling ship: “And it has been falling for a long time.” According to internal data, Apple’s technology is still said to be “years” behind which of competitors.

It is not unusual that Apple takes your time. Regardless of whether the smartphone, the MP3 player, computer watches or at the tablet: Apple was never the first provider, but the company had an exciting solution ready, the other trumped. Many devices were also “baked” at the customers – through constant software updates. But the basics were right. There are apparently also internally doubts that this is the case with Apple Intelligence. The problem is also that Apple put enormous resources into his attempts, but was hardly to see anything. Nevertheless, you are also technically afterwards in other areas, bought less GPUs for voice model training or had fewer experts for LLM-KI.

“Do Engine” – but Siri doesn’t make it

According to Bloomberg, Apple’s vehicle project was ultimately discontinued due to AI problems because it was not possible to produce a fully autonomous car. AI is of central importance for many areas. Steve Jobs is also said to have seen the future in Siri. His idea was to create a “do engine” about which you can talk to the Internet and your assistant will do everything for you “. Siri only came onto the market after Jobs’ death. After a stormy development period, fewer and fewer functions came after and the voice assistant was smiled at a lot.

A problem for Apple in the AI ​​area is obviously that it often remains unclear what the product is. Federighi, according to a long-time Apple manager, is not a one who just put a lot of money and many people into a project without it being clear. At the start of Chatgpt at the end of 2022, Apple Intelligence was “not even a thought”. Openai was observed. “Anyone who has paid attention in this market should have seen it and had to get in there fully.” A month later, Federighi himself wrote code with Chatgpt for a personal project, writes Bloomberg, and the potential had become clear to him. After that there were meetings with Openai, Anthropic and other teammates. iOS 18 should get as many AI functions as possible-with the known result.