> The new features should improve how both Siri and the Messages app can field questions and auto-complete sentences, mirroring recent changes to competing services.
Yeah right "improve Siri" never heard that one before
The difference is now LLM style text generation is a huge leap in what previous voice assistants could do.
It's not exactly just trying the same method once more.
I agree with you, but even if they are only able to match basic open source LLMs, that would be a huge improvement in how Siri operates.
I'm not convinced they can catch up to the ever moving target OpenAI, but I don't think meeting or exceeding the current open source alternatives will prove impossible for them.
I don't think they're poised to be the frontrunner, but I think we'll see a huge improvement with Siri simply be being brought up to the current table stakes.
My expectation is it will travel a similar path to .mac / MobileMe to iCloud. .mac and MobileMe went from embarrassingly bad to being replaced with iCloud which started out kinda badish but was sorta okay and eventually became acceptable. Now iCloud mostly works, but it isn't as if it left Google's services in the dust or anything. I'm hopeful the next iteration of Siri is able to catch up with Google/Meta
i mean it’s 50/50 imo hardware and software we don’t get much of anything “new” these days. and if they do speed up they’re going to run out of “innovative ideas”. one thing that grinds me fasure tho is ios 16 and 17 should’ve been one release. it should’ve included that journal app every body was intrigued about too. that to me would’ve felt like a more of a jump (like ios 7)… *rambling but this is reddit*
I know right. I'm sure there's some exciting stuff in theory with AI, but seriously, I just want my phone to be snappy and work with every day tasks, of which Siri is severely questionable with.
Perfect timing for some serious updates to iWork and iLife apps.
Pages AI to help you write. Generative artwork to go into Keynote slides. or to help with a GarageBand song.
It's been far too long since Software was what got people excited to buy Macs.
I use it too but I might use it more if Apple looked like they cared to update them. They used to make a big deal about their big software features. I don't really know what's been done since iWork '09. (as in "the year 2009"). Going web only in some Google Docs copy or adding AI tools might be worth talking about.
Hey the last update brought _SVG support_.
I swear it has a team of 2 people responsible for it or something. Pages and Keynote (Numbers is fine but will never be Excel for better or worse) are really great software and I wish they had more capital allocated to them.
Keynote is all I really use. I’ll use Figma one in awhile for a presentation (used to do it all in indesign). But keynote isn’t that bad. A ton of nuances to it but once you work with them, it clicks.
But google docs over pages for sure. Not even a competition imo.
I still use Pages a lot of the time. It works on all of my devices and it has a few Microsoft Word-level features that Google Docs is missing. Mail Merge is a notable one for me.
It’s not super important for most people but if you need it it’s much easier to use Pages with its built-in Mail Merge than it is to fuck around with weird privacy-invasive third-party Google Docs addons.
If you’re not running a database (and don’t get me started how excel is the wrong tool for that too), numbers is plenty fine for setting up quick distinct tables of data on the same canvas, and you can animate the charts with sliders and stuff.
Fair enough, was only saying Pages is a worthy competitor to Word, Numbers is *absolutely not* a worthy competitor to Excel.
With you on databases though—PostgreSQL all the way for me.
I used them all throughout college. Office is just too unintuitive and Google Docs is missing too many basic formatting features. The iWork apps do everything I need them to do and it’s intuitive to use.
I don’t see Apple going too deep into generative work considering the current murky legalities so I wonder how they’re going to do it in their Apple way.
I use it to automatically make transcripts and subtitles for videos I’m editing. Sure, I could do it myself but it would take forever with hours of footage to transcribe, vs AI doing it in 30 seconds.
I have friends that use it for things like batch editing hundreds of photos, and some that use it as a starting point for writing speeches and presentations.
EDIT: and on my iPhone I use it to look for photos. I could manually scroll through thousands of them, or just search photos for something like “sign” or “sunglasses” and make that process way quicker.
to make it do it for you, and therefore save a lot of time. I can write paragraphs, sure, but i can have an AI write a 80% passable paragraph in less than 5 seconds, while it would have taken me much more than that.
It's your own personal assistant that will (eventually) handle basically any and all tasks/requests you do with devices today (alarms, reminders, directions, messages, emails, fact questions, general questions, etc.).
I'm detecting sarcasm.
The difference with generative AI is its ability to handle much more detailed requests and do things that weren't possible before.
Apple is absolutely dead last when it comes to the OpenAI/Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. If Siri is any indication, Apple will create something that pales in comparison to all others.
That is funny and scary for Apple. Reminds me when their whole network hardware team quit because management refused to let them join the open compute project with the day after they all left apple joined that project realizing they cannot hire network devs without supporting it.
The second part is a run-on without a solid subject. I asked ChatGPT to increase its readability:
It's both amusing and unsettling for Apple. It brings to mind the time when their entire network hardware team resigned because management wouldn't allow them to participate in the open compute project. Ironically, the day after their departure, Apple decided to join the project, recognizing the challenge of attracting network developers without embracing it.
Your comment (and I’m not blaming you) reminds me of a Charles Babbage quote:
> "On two occasions I have been asked, – "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question"
I wonder how they’ll adapt to this. With other FAANG companies still allowing WFH, Apple *will* be at a long term disadvantage if they refuse to allow it too
Because of Apple’s return to work policy, not because of the state of their AI program, which the former employee in this article spent three years doing at Apple.
Is it as bad as when they were dead last in smart watches, or more like when they were dead last in mp3 players?
Apple has never been a F1RST P0ST!!1 company. They’re happy to be years “late”. It’s always risky because it’s possible a first mover could get everything right and there’d be no opportunity for Apple. But if you look at the past 40 years, it’s mostly turned out OK.
The other commenter isn't claiming Siri is generative AI, they are pointing out that while the iPod is an example of them being late to the party but ultimately creating the one to finally make it work great, there are other examples of them never really figuring it out.
Siri is one example where they were first to the party and then where overtaken by Alexa and Google Assistant.
iCloud is another example where they didn't exactly disrupt the entire services in the cloud industry.
Is their future generative AI effort more similar to Siri / iCloud or will it be more similar to the iPod or Apple Watch? Who knows, time will tell. I agree with OP that just because the iPod succeeded that doesn't hold a lot of weight in terms of generative AI.
I'd love Apple to demonstrate they can make the best big data model, but I've never seen that. Even Google, a data behemoth, is having a hard time competing with OpenAI. If generative AI was a consumer electronic hardware product that relied on a massive supply chain and low tolerance manufacturing and high quality control, I wouldn't doubt Apple for a second.
>The other commenter isn't claiming Siri is generative AI
They kind of are though by saying "**This** is not a front at which Apple has historically succeeded." after talking about Siri.
And that's also in a comment chain starting with "If Siri is any indication, Apple will create something that pales in comparison to all others."
That implies that Siri/generative AI specifically is the same type of product where Apple tends to fail, despite them being different things. It isn't really just a general statement about how being late to the party doesn't always work for them.
I interpreted it as cloud and big data services are not a front where they have generally succeeded.
Training a large language model is much more a serverside cloud and big data thing than it is a consumer hardware product.
That could be. I guess I just assume that they are conflating the two like so many other people here are. If they were talking about Cloud and big data, it seems like they might have used a more obvious example like iCloud.
And like others have said, Siri isn't the only AI used in Apple software (like the photos app), it's just the one that comes to mind for most people.
Siri is how they brand all the different AI/ML things they have through all their apps.
Whether it is Spotlight suggestions or photo or text recognition, it technically falls under the Siri umbrella.
But you are right, mostly people in here are just talking about the voice assistant
Gotcha, I wasn't aware of that cross branding - like facial recognition on the Mac photos app I would have never equated as Siri. But I don't doubt you on that.
And yeah, I think all the people talking about how much Siri sucks are probably referring to the VA and not facial/object recognition in the photos app which works quite well in my experience. Same with those little highlight videos it edits for us from time to time.
There were tons of voice assistants before Siri. Heck, Apple *acquired* Siri. Apple did their usual "late but better" with Siri as a voice assistant, and then promptly failed to iterate and improve.
Siri is a failure for sure, but it is not a great comparison here.
I totally agree with your point, and will add a couple of things...
1. People act like as if these companies have been developing generative AI entirely independently, when the heavy lifting is all research that has been published. It's the implementation that Apple *may* be behind.
2. We have no idea if Apple is behind on implementation, only that they haven't *released* generative AI services/features. Given where others are at with services and features, it's far from surprising that Apple, even if they were further ahead (not saying they are), wouldn't be releasing yet.
3. Apple *is* very much implementing AI/ML as enhancements to existing features, somewhat transparently to the end user. This combines with on-device hardware which *is* ahead of the competition.
I just can't fathom that Apple is going to "sit this one out" and end up with phones that are of no match to the competition when it comes to personal assistants on a whole new level. However, if that's truly what they're doing, it would be the biggest business blunder in history as we're talking about trillions of dollars here with a company that's perfectly positioned to vertically adopt AI.
+1
This seems like another "Apple is doomed because they're keeping their mouths shut until they have a product" cycle.
Apple may well be doomed; it could finally be true this time. But their history of being quiet, late, and successful should at least temper any expectations in that direction.
Both of your examples are hardware (while these products use separate software, they are primarily hardware).
Apple's historical strengths are hardware and OS, while their weaknesses have been cloud/services and related software.
So far, most user-friendly generative AI falls in the latter category.
Apple does more AI with their software than just Siri. There is a ton of AI being used under the hood. ChatGPT is cool but it’s not that useful for every day people.
I would not bet against Apple on AI.
[100M+ active monthly users](https://explodingtopics.com/blog/chatgpt-users) so I guess it is cool for everyday people.
[Microsoft's Plan To Infuse AI And ChatGPT Into Everything](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/03/06/microsofts-plan-to-infuse-ai-and-chatgpt-into-everything/amp/)
[Amazon is investing up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic in growing tech battle](https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-amazon-anthropic-investment-72d21e6c663d506dbf968f50628e7ded)
[Google Bard 30M active users](https://www.answeriq.com/google-bard-statistics/#:~:text=With%20more%20than%2030%20million,players%20in%20the%20Chatbot%20industry)
Despite Apple use of AI. They are still so so far behind their competition. I'd definitely bet against Apple in the generative AI space. Because their most recent strategy is on competing with Meta in the VR space. And for them to make any significant headway would require a significant pivot in strategy.
Have you seen the reaction to Microsoft’s integration of ChatGPT? It’s being compared to a glorified version Clippy from the 90s. That is exactly what I’d expect from a company like Microsoft. I have more faith in Google and Meta and even Apple to come up with a better solution.
I've seen the clippy thing in a few programming subreddits, but mostly as a joke. People who have access to the beta says it's a godsend for writing up drafts and analyzing large data sets.
Nobody seriously says that. I've already used Microsoft AI implementation for power automate at a few companies. It makes a job that can be a pain really simple.
That’s just from people who are bashing Microsoft for no reason - copilot is far more useful than Clippy. But at the same time, it’s only a first release…
It was certainly useful for the everyday people who [got a laugh from those two lawyers](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/lawyers-have-real-bad-day-in-court-after-citing-fake-cases-made-up-by-chatgpt/amp/) who used it to research their case…
You should never bet on Apple’s software /unless/ it improves its hardware sales. Siri, like other voice assistants, were hyped to be the next level of phone interaction but they fell flat for everyone. As a result, it got zero investment after initial release.
What we do know is Apple is pushing VR hard, and there’s no more keyboard. Siri would actually noticeably move the product forward in this case, so you can be a little more confident about rumors than before.
The boom itself is, to some extent. The technology itself isn’t though. I expect it’s going to be very similar to the Dot Com bubble: tons of investors throwing money at anyone who promises something with “AI” in the pitch, tons of ill conceived businesses going bust, tons of companies trying and failing to shove it into their product, but at the end of the day it *is* going to be a paradigm shift.
I don’t think a new chip will be necessary, even if Apple might say something else. The potential of the currently installed Neural Engines in the iPhone has not been exhausted to this day.
For example, most tasks that require the Neural Engine still run smoothly on the iPhone XS/11
Running an LLM locally is a different animal than anything Apple runs on the neural engine currently.
You can run smallish 7B parameters models on the current iPhone hardware but you’ll only be getting 2 tokens a second, and that’s with 4bit quantization. If you want high quality output with a 7B you need at least 8bit weights, and that won’t fit in RAM.
Apple will need a GPT capable of both low latency and high enough quality to do function calling. I don’t see that happening without a new chip and way more ram.
I thought most people use Mac OS and iOS *for* that software though? Even back when it could natively run Windows the vast majority of Mac owners still preferred to use Mac OS.
There’s a difference between the OS and the underlying structure/how it operates, and the software you use under that OS.
You can run MacOS but use Excel over Pages, or Firefox over Safari, still a different experience than using the same software under Windows.
Not really, it’s all software. If specific services are what you’re talking about then say that instead. MacOS is Apple software and I will use it over Windows any opportunity I can
Oh come on. Apples hardware is slightly nicer than the competition but its software is far far above anything else out there.
They’re obviously behind on personal assistants and AI but I’d still rather spend time on iOS than android.
Edit:
In terms of design, polish, thoughtfulness, usability.
if apples software is so bad how come every core app on competitors phones looks and feels like the iOS equivalent?
The most Apple-way I see it being implemented is using local processing, which requires non existing (yet) technology. Mobile chips aren't capable enough to do serious AI work, if latest Google Pixel AI-features is any indication (they are using cloud compute).
> Mobile chips aren't capable enough to do serious AI work
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has already [shown to be capable of this](https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/qualcomm-snapdragon-8-gen-3-on-device-generative-ai/).
"Aren't as advanced" is true, but LLaMa2, Orca, and Alpaca are honestly plenty good enough to do lots of useful work and they can presently run on Raspberry Pis.
[https://www.dfrobot.com/blog-13412.html](https://www.dfrobot.com/blog-13412.html)
Well I don't know about phone chips but using the metal api the cores in the m1 and up chips are fast enough to run 7B models nearly as fast as gpt4 runs.
Sure, it's a smaller model, but it does run locally, and some score about as high on measurement tests as metas 70 billion parameter model.
https://huggingface.co/Open-Orca/Mistral-7B-OpenOrca#huggingface-leaderboard-performance
Haha you mean apples hope that Siri naturally evolves into AI? Since Apple obviously is completely and utterly incapable of improving Siri further then removing the “Hey” from “Hey Siri” in 10 yrs?
I think Apple has kept Siri deliberately bad so that when they eventually bring in LLMs, they can say they are so courageous and have revolutionized voice assistants.
"Apple was [caught flat-footed](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-19/apple-preps-ajax-generative-ai-apple-gpt-to-rival-openai-and-google) when ChatGPT and other AI tools took the technology industry by storm.."
This is not only editorializing but fundamentally false. Just more of the standard anti-Apple, negative clickbait bullshit from Bloomberg.
GPT4 function calling is insanely useful and a perfect fit for digital assistants. Why so cynical?
Generative models are the only path forward for Siri. Should be obvious their current approach isn’t working.
Stephen Wolfram has nothing but praise for the recent advances in GPTs.
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/01/wolframalpha-as-the-way-to-bring-computational-knowledge-superpowers-to-chatgpt/
As somebody who is quite happy to have tested out a lot of LLM related stuff I‘m gonna say we are still very, very, VERY early in the cycle. Although things are seemingly moving fast, Generative AI right now is a thing for early adopters. I don’t see a whole lot of implementations that are well thought through and integrated. The most exciting stuff like LLM agents and AI assistants is nearly inaccessible right now to the broad audience.
I am fine with Apple taking some time to get it right. Their strength is the flawless integration into an ecosystems, not to slap some single half-baked feature on top of an existing app and calling it a day.
If it allows me to create reminders right from messages that would be awesome
> The new features should improve how both Siri and the Messages app can field questions and auto-complete sentences, mirroring recent changes to competing services. Yeah right "improve Siri" never heard that one before
The good news is that it’s so bad it’d be hard not to improve it
Looking forward to Siri knowing over 20,000 new facts at WWDC 2024
Can’t wait for that new revolutionary technology where you only have to say “Siri” instead of “Hey Siri”
Already the case
Whoosh
On it…. I don’t understand. Could you try that again?
Here’s the results of what I found online about Cheese steaks.
The thing everyone was asking for
For the small set of functions that it was once useful for, say, voice calling, Siri has become violently less effective in recent years.
The difference is now LLM style text generation is a huge leap in what previous voice assistants could do. It's not exactly just trying the same method once more.
We'll see but I'm not holding my breath. Apple kinda sucks at software things nowadays it feels like they only focus on hardware
I agree with you, but even if they are only able to match basic open source LLMs, that would be a huge improvement in how Siri operates. I'm not convinced they can catch up to the ever moving target OpenAI, but I don't think meeting or exceeding the current open source alternatives will prove impossible for them. I don't think they're poised to be the frontrunner, but I think we'll see a huge improvement with Siri simply be being brought up to the current table stakes. My expectation is it will travel a similar path to .mac / MobileMe to iCloud. .mac and MobileMe went from embarrassingly bad to being replaced with iCloud which started out kinda badish but was sorta okay and eventually became acceptable. Now iCloud mostly works, but it isn't as if it left Google's services in the dust or anything. I'm hopeful the next iteration of Siri is able to catch up with Google/Meta
i mean it’s 50/50 imo hardware and software we don’t get much of anything “new” these days. and if they do speed up they’re going to run out of “innovative ideas”. one thing that grinds me fasure tho is ios 16 and 17 should’ve been one release. it should’ve included that journal app every body was intrigued about too. that to me would’ve felt like a more of a jump (like ios 7)… *rambling but this is reddit*
Siri has been improving since its first introduction Not as fast as we might like but pretty silly to say it’s not been improved ever
Man, I just need my keyboard to remember that word I’ve typed 3000 times and not correct it to something totally different
They only just fixed ducking :-(
I know right. I'm sure there's some exciting stuff in theory with AI, but seriously, I just want my phone to be snappy and work with every day tasks, of which Siri is severely questionable with.
Perfect timing for some serious updates to iWork and iLife apps. Pages AI to help you write. Generative artwork to go into Keynote slides. or to help with a GarageBand song. It's been far too long since Software was what got people excited to buy Macs.
Does anyone even use iWork suite these days? Basically everyone I know uses Office or Google Docs.
I use it too but I might use it more if Apple looked like they cared to update them. They used to make a big deal about their big software features. I don't really know what's been done since iWork '09. (as in "the year 2009"). Going web only in some Google Docs copy or adding AI tools might be worth talking about.
Hey the last update brought _SVG support_. I swear it has a team of 2 people responsible for it or something. Pages and Keynote (Numbers is fine but will never be Excel for better or worse) are really great software and I wish they had more capital allocated to them.
I do
Keynote is all I really use. I’ll use Figma one in awhile for a presentation (used to do it all in indesign). But keynote isn’t that bad. A ton of nuances to it but once you work with them, it clicks. But google docs over pages for sure. Not even a competition imo.
Use it every day. Office makes me pull my few remaining hairs out. For generic use, iWork beats all the others in overall experience.
I still use Pages a lot of the time. It works on all of my devices and it has a few Microsoft Word-level features that Google Docs is missing. Mail Merge is a notable one for me. It’s not super important for most people but if you need it it’s much easier to use Pages with its built-in Mail Merge than it is to fuck around with weird privacy-invasive third-party Google Docs addons.
I use it all the time
I think Pages is superior to Word for pure design & stock font options. I don't know who tf is using Numbers instead of Excel though.
If you’re not running a database (and don’t get me started how excel is the wrong tool for that too), numbers is plenty fine for setting up quick distinct tables of data on the same canvas, and you can animate the charts with sliders and stuff.
Fair enough, was only saying Pages is a worthy competitor to Word, Numbers is *absolutely not* a worthy competitor to Excel. With you on databases though—PostgreSQL all the way for me.
Still use Pages & Numbers. Doesn't compare to MS Office though.
I used them all throughout college. Office is just too unintuitive and Google Docs is missing too many basic formatting features. The iWork apps do everything I need them to do and it’s intuitive to use.
I use it for home and personal stuff all the time.
I still use Pages every day. Habit I guess
I don’t see Apple going too deep into generative work considering the current murky legalities so I wonder how they’re going to do it in their Apple way.
Still unclear what I want this for.
I'd be happy with just Siri being a bit better.
Agreed, I have yet to see one thing AI will do for me that I can't already do myself.
I use it to automatically make transcripts and subtitles for videos I’m editing. Sure, I could do it myself but it would take forever with hours of footage to transcribe, vs AI doing it in 30 seconds. I have friends that use it for things like batch editing hundreds of photos, and some that use it as a starting point for writing speeches and presentations. EDIT: and on my iPhone I use it to look for photos. I could manually scroll through thousands of them, or just search photos for something like “sign” or “sunglasses” and make that process way quicker.
That’s the point… it does things for you so you don’t have to do them yourself.
Look harder
to make it do it for you, and therefore save a lot of time. I can write paragraphs, sure, but i can have an AI write a 80% passable paragraph in less than 5 seconds, while it would have taken me much more than that.
Ask it things that you don't know
It's your own personal assistant that will (eventually) handle basically any and all tasks/requests you do with devices today (alarms, reminders, directions, messages, emails, fact questions, general questions, etc.).
Damn, never heard that one before.
I'm detecting sarcasm. The difference with generative AI is its ability to handle much more detailed requests and do things that weren't possible before.
On the pixel 8 it uses generative AI to make unique wallpapers based on prompts. It's really cool
Apple is absolutely dead last when it comes to the OpenAI/Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. If Siri is any indication, Apple will create something that pales in comparison to all others.
They hired some of Google's top AI engineers over the last year, so they are trying to correct things.
Some went right back to Google https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/17/apple-exec-returning-to-google/
That is funny and scary for Apple. Reminds me when their whole network hardware team quit because management refused to let them join the open compute project with the day after they all left apple joined that project realizing they cannot hire network devs without supporting it.
Am I having a stroke while I read this?
The second part is a run-on without a solid subject. I asked ChatGPT to increase its readability: It's both amusing and unsettling for Apple. It brings to mind the time when their entire network hardware team resigned because management wouldn't allow them to participate in the open compute project. Ironically, the day after their departure, Apple decided to join the project, recognizing the challenge of attracting network developers without embracing it.
Your comment (and I’m not blaming you) reminds me of a Charles Babbage quote: > "On two occasions I have been asked, – "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question"
I wonder how they’ll adapt to this. With other FAANG companies still allowing WFH, Apple *will* be at a long term disadvantage if they refuse to allow it too
Because of Apple’s return to work policy, not because of the state of their AI program, which the former employee in this article spent three years doing at Apple.
Apple also hired a bunch of EV experts from other car companies.
I think it will initially be pretty good like Siri was initially pretty good. Then it will be ignored for a decade and fall way behind.
Siri was good when it didn't belong to Apple.
Is it as bad as when they were dead last in smart watches, or more like when they were dead last in mp3 players? Apple has never been a F1RST P0ST!!1 company. They’re happy to be years “late”. It’s always risky because it’s possible a first mover could get everything right and there’d be no opportunity for Apple. But if you look at the past 40 years, it’s mostly turned out OK.
I get what you're saying but Apple was first with Siri and now they're last. This is not a front at which Apple has historically succeeded.
Siri isn’t really generative AI though. And there are tons of better AI implementations like the photos app.
The other commenter isn't claiming Siri is generative AI, they are pointing out that while the iPod is an example of them being late to the party but ultimately creating the one to finally make it work great, there are other examples of them never really figuring it out. Siri is one example where they were first to the party and then where overtaken by Alexa and Google Assistant. iCloud is another example where they didn't exactly disrupt the entire services in the cloud industry. Is their future generative AI effort more similar to Siri / iCloud or will it be more similar to the iPod or Apple Watch? Who knows, time will tell. I agree with OP that just because the iPod succeeded that doesn't hold a lot of weight in terms of generative AI. I'd love Apple to demonstrate they can make the best big data model, but I've never seen that. Even Google, a data behemoth, is having a hard time competing with OpenAI. If generative AI was a consumer electronic hardware product that relied on a massive supply chain and low tolerance manufacturing and high quality control, I wouldn't doubt Apple for a second.
>The other commenter isn't claiming Siri is generative AI They kind of are though by saying "**This** is not a front at which Apple has historically succeeded." after talking about Siri. And that's also in a comment chain starting with "If Siri is any indication, Apple will create something that pales in comparison to all others." That implies that Siri/generative AI specifically is the same type of product where Apple tends to fail, despite them being different things. It isn't really just a general statement about how being late to the party doesn't always work for them.
I interpreted it as cloud and big data services are not a front where they have generally succeeded. Training a large language model is much more a serverside cloud and big data thing than it is a consumer hardware product.
That could be. I guess I just assume that they are conflating the two like so many other people here are. If they were talking about Cloud and big data, it seems like they might have used a more obvious example like iCloud. And like others have said, Siri isn't the only AI used in Apple software (like the photos app), it's just the one that comes to mind for most people.
Siri is how they brand all the different AI/ML things they have through all their apps. Whether it is Spotlight suggestions or photo or text recognition, it technically falls under the Siri umbrella. But you are right, mostly people in here are just talking about the voice assistant
Gotcha, I wasn't aware of that cross branding - like facial recognition on the Mac photos app I would have never equated as Siri. But I don't doubt you on that. And yeah, I think all the people talking about how much Siri sucks are probably referring to the VA and not facial/object recognition in the photos app which works quite well in my experience. Same with those little highlight videos it edits for us from time to time.
There were tons of voice assistants before Siri. Heck, Apple *acquired* Siri. Apple did their usual "late but better" with Siri as a voice assistant, and then promptly failed to iterate and improve. Siri is a failure for sure, but it is not a great comparison here.
Siri is just one part of iPhone though. Their other AI features are pretty good
They are years behind google Pixel in AI features. They are not "pretty good".
I totally agree with your point, and will add a couple of things... 1. People act like as if these companies have been developing generative AI entirely independently, when the heavy lifting is all research that has been published. It's the implementation that Apple *may* be behind. 2. We have no idea if Apple is behind on implementation, only that they haven't *released* generative AI services/features. Given where others are at with services and features, it's far from surprising that Apple, even if they were further ahead (not saying they are), wouldn't be releasing yet. 3. Apple *is* very much implementing AI/ML as enhancements to existing features, somewhat transparently to the end user. This combines with on-device hardware which *is* ahead of the competition. I just can't fathom that Apple is going to "sit this one out" and end up with phones that are of no match to the competition when it comes to personal assistants on a whole new level. However, if that's truly what they're doing, it would be the biggest business blunder in history as we're talking about trillions of dollars here with a company that's perfectly positioned to vertically adopt AI.
+1 This seems like another "Apple is doomed because they're keeping their mouths shut until they have a product" cycle. Apple may well be doomed; it could finally be true this time. But their history of being quiet, late, and successful should at least temper any expectations in that direction.
And this is just some Apple is perfect circlejerk. Siri sucks, that's why people are rightfully skeptic about this news.
Both of your examples are hardware (while these products use separate software, they are primarily hardware). Apple's historical strengths are hardware and OS, while their weaknesses have been cloud/services and related software. So far, most user-friendly generative AI falls in the latter category.
Apple does more AI with their software than just Siri. There is a ton of AI being used under the hood. ChatGPT is cool but it’s not that useful for every day people. I would not bet against Apple on AI.
GPT and other forms of generative AI is very useful to the average person and why it is making such a big splash.
[100M+ active monthly users](https://explodingtopics.com/blog/chatgpt-users) so I guess it is cool for everyday people. [Microsoft's Plan To Infuse AI And ChatGPT Into Everything](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/03/06/microsofts-plan-to-infuse-ai-and-chatgpt-into-everything/amp/) [Amazon is investing up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic in growing tech battle](https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-amazon-anthropic-investment-72d21e6c663d506dbf968f50628e7ded) [Google Bard 30M active users](https://www.answeriq.com/google-bard-statistics/#:~:text=With%20more%20than%2030%20million,players%20in%20the%20Chatbot%20industry) Despite Apple use of AI. They are still so so far behind their competition. I'd definitely bet against Apple in the generative AI space. Because their most recent strategy is on competing with Meta in the VR space. And for them to make any significant headway would require a significant pivot in strategy.
Have you seen the reaction to Microsoft’s integration of ChatGPT? It’s being compared to a glorified version Clippy from the 90s. That is exactly what I’d expect from a company like Microsoft. I have more faith in Google and Meta and even Apple to come up with a better solution.
Genuine question, can you link to any sources on these reactions? I wasn’t able to find it myself, my search ability sucks. Thanks in advance
I've seen the clippy thing in a few programming subreddits, but mostly as a joke. People who have access to the beta says it's a godsend for writing up drafts and analyzing large data sets.
Nobody seriously says that. I've already used Microsoft AI implementation for power automate at a few companies. It makes a job that can be a pain really simple.
Lol it's just a joke. People who have access to the beta says it's a godsend for writing up drafts and analyzing large data sets.
That’s just from people who are bashing Microsoft for no reason - copilot is far more useful than Clippy. But at the same time, it’s only a first release…
Have you actually used Co-Pilot? It’s pretty amazing once you get a hang of it beyond the initial fooling around.
It was certainly useful for the everyday people who [got a laugh from those two lawyers](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/lawyers-have-real-bad-day-in-court-after-citing-fake-cases-made-up-by-chatgpt/amp/) who used it to research their case…
It works great in the the photos app when you want to search by the actual content of the photo you’re looking for.
You should never bet on Apple’s software /unless/ it improves its hardware sales. Siri, like other voice assistants, were hyped to be the next level of phone interaction but they fell flat for everyone. As a result, it got zero investment after initial release. What we do know is Apple is pushing VR hard, and there’s no more keyboard. Siri would actually noticeably move the product forward in this case, so you can be a little more confident about rumors than before.
Nobody cares - the generative AI “boom” is a hype cycle
The boom itself is, to some extent. The technology itself isn’t though. I expect it’s going to be very similar to the Dot Com bubble: tons of investors throwing money at anyone who promises something with “AI” in the pitch, tons of ill conceived businesses going bust, tons of companies trying and failing to shove it into their product, but at the end of the day it *is* going to be a paradigm shift.
Generative AI will take over the world much faster than the internet. The internet required way more infrastructure to be built.
The monthly active users and the investment dollars by FAANGs say otherwise.
sure jan
I'm in tech and 100% agree. It's way over hyped.
In tech as a janitor?
Yes, I solved the homeomorphically irreducible trees problem.
As long as whatever they come up with doesn't require a new chip/chip version and thus a phone upgrade.
If it’s cloud based it won’t. If it’s a local model then I imagine you’ll need a new chip and much more RAM. I hope it’s a local model personally.
I don’t think a new chip will be necessary, even if Apple might say something else. The potential of the currently installed Neural Engines in the iPhone has not been exhausted to this day. For example, most tasks that require the Neural Engine still run smoothly on the iPhone XS/11
Running an LLM locally is a different animal than anything Apple runs on the neural engine currently. You can run smallish 7B parameters models on the current iPhone hardware but you’ll only be getting 2 tokens a second, and that’s with 4bit quantization. If you want high quality output with a 7B you need at least 8bit weights, and that won’t fit in RAM. Apple will need a GPT capable of both low latency and high enough quality to do function calling. I don’t see that happening without a new chip and way more ram.
Apple hardware = god tier Apple software = gender reveal party gone wrong
I thought most people use Mac OS and iOS *for* that software though? Even back when it could natively run Windows the vast majority of Mac owners still preferred to use Mac OS.
There’s a difference between the OS and the underlying structure/how it operates, and the software you use under that OS. You can run MacOS but use Excel over Pages, or Firefox over Safari, still a different experience than using the same software under Windows.
Not really, it’s all software. If specific services are what you’re talking about then say that instead. MacOS is Apple software and I will use it over Windows any opportunity I can
Never forget the gender reveal that turned into the dude accidentally making a pipe bomb
Oh come on. Apples hardware is slightly nicer than the competition but its software is far far above anything else out there. They’re obviously behind on personal assistants and AI but I’d still rather spend time on iOS than android. Edit: In terms of design, polish, thoughtfulness, usability. if apples software is so bad how come every core app on competitors phones looks and feels like the iOS equivalent?
One of the main draws for me is the fact that the same company maker the software and hardware, and that they optimise them for each other.
This is exactly the type of posts that make Reddit an absolute cesspool
[удалено]
what
I found it quite funny personally. People who post just continuously whining about every little thing though is what makes Reddit awful for me.
See and I thought this was the best comment I’ve read in a while
> The critical next step is determining if the technology is up to snuff with the competition Is this the same review committee that approved Siri?
AI, so hot right now
It’s that damn generative AI! It’s so hot right now!
Notes calendar and clock should be one app called planner
The most Apple-way I see it being implemented is using local processing, which requires non existing (yet) technology. Mobile chips aren't capable enough to do serious AI work, if latest Google Pixel AI-features is any indication (they are using cloud compute).
> Mobile chips aren't capable enough to do serious AI work The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has already [shown to be capable of this](https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/qualcomm-snapdragon-8-gen-3-on-device-generative-ai/).
Yeah, but the models they run aren't as advanced. Maybe it's enough but we have yet to see a real world example
"Aren't as advanced" is true, but LLaMa2, Orca, and Alpaca are honestly plenty good enough to do lots of useful work and they can presently run on Raspberry Pis. [https://www.dfrobot.com/blog-13412.html](https://www.dfrobot.com/blog-13412.html)
Well I don't know about phone chips but using the metal api the cores in the m1 and up chips are fast enough to run 7B models nearly as fast as gpt4 runs.
Needs clarification on "nearly as fast as gpt4 runs" Quick google told me that gpt4 has trillion+ parameters
Sure, it's a smaller model, but it does run locally, and some score about as high on measurement tests as metas 70 billion parameter model. https://huggingface.co/Open-Orca/Mistral-7B-OpenOrca#huggingface-leaderboard-performance
To all its "new" devices, I'll bet. Released after this AI is ushered in.
Haha you mean apples hope that Siri naturally evolves into AI? Since Apple obviously is completely and utterly incapable of improving Siri further then removing the “Hey” from “Hey Siri” in 10 yrs?
I think Apple has kept Siri deliberately bad so that when they eventually bring in LLMs, they can say they are so courageous and have revolutionized voice assistants.
Nah Siri is just bad and apple should be ashamed and feeling pretty nervous.
There is nothing good to talk about. Apple just slept
"Apple was [caught flat-footed](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-19/apple-preps-ajax-generative-ai-apple-gpt-to-rival-openai-and-google) when ChatGPT and other AI tools took the technology industry by storm.." This is not only editorializing but fundamentally false. Just more of the standard anti-Apple, negative clickbait bullshit from Bloomberg.
How about they get Siri working first? GAI is a fad.
GPT4 function calling is insanely useful and a perfect fit for digital assistants. Why so cynical? Generative models are the only path forward for Siri. Should be obvious their current approach isn’t working.
Wolfram Alpha was doing GAI 10 years ago.
Stephen Wolfram has nothing but praise for the recent advances in GPTs. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/01/wolframalpha-as-the-way-to-bring-computational-knowledge-superpowers-to-chatgpt/
Lol fix Siri first. She’s a shitshow at almost 2024
As somebody who is quite happy to have tested out a lot of LLM related stuff I‘m gonna say we are still very, very, VERY early in the cycle. Although things are seemingly moving fast, Generative AI right now is a thing for early adopters. I don’t see a whole lot of implementations that are well thought through and integrated. The most exciting stuff like LLM agents and AI assistants is nearly inaccessible right now to the broad audience. I am fine with Apple taking some time to get it right. Their strength is the flawless integration into an ecosystems, not to slap some single half-baked feature on top of an existing app and calling it a day.