I honestly don't understand why tech giants aren't doing this stuff.
My main problem with startups around this is that it’s just a big ask to get access to all my data and store it in their cloud.
...after almost 10 years of internal stagnation and killing Siri's other upgrade projects: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/04/27/report-details-turmoil-...
It's just baffling. Same goes for Microsoft and how utterly unusable Cortana is, these features should be more than afterthought integrations that limp along because they're too cheap to get rid of. The slow "evolution" of voice assistants is pretty much ensuring that nobody wants to use them, at least among the people I know that own smartphones. Something tells me that AI won't be the selling point Apple thinks it is, especially when anyone with a web browser can use ChatGPT for free.
I’ve read through Apple’s Intelligence architecture and I liked what I saw (context graph on device; how the integrations work; if doing remote inference only sending the relevant parts; the architecture of private compute).
I haven’t upgraded my phone in a while, and this will be the final push for me to get their next phone, personally, and I’ve been using ChatGPT and now Claude from the moment they got to a sensible level.
That all of them are taking their sweet time with this makes me think it was just hard to get something production-ready out that will work for 99% of the population well.
So let me get this straight. You want AI features, but not the ChatGPT 4o functionality you can go use for free right now. You intend to upgrade to one of the Pro phones (the only ones guaranteed to get local AI functionality) for subpar AI functionality and less freedom to select an LLM that works for you?
I don't get it. Since WWDC I've heard so much contradiction around what people want from Apple AI. Maybe I'm misinformed, but I think it's absolute nonsense that someone would trust OpenAI only when Apple is the middleman. I certainly know the majority of smartphone customers couldn't care less.
Importantly, I have a fair bit of trust towards OpenAI, but I’m not willing to share the details of half my digital life with them.
After reading Apple’s Intelligence architecture, I feel fairly comfortable with having it use the data from all my various apps for context.
I would take those whitepapers with a grain of salt if I were you. Apple's documentation has been known for redacting certain... details, per the request of the US government. Plus, it's not like you or I can go audit the tech (or even the code) and confirm it's the same as in the documentation.
Then again, I trust OpenAI and Apple both as far as I can throw them. Maybe it is me being overly discriminate about what I consider secure and not.
That's very obvious from your comment.
Apple Intelligence is an on-device LLM backed by a private Apple hosted LLM. So it has access to your private data and is designed to provide capabilities that can leverage it e.g. it will have knowledge of all your personal interactions across multiple apps. It is fundamentally a personal experience.
It is completely different from ChatGPT which is a single LLM that is used to provide a public experience. And nothing is stopping you from using Claude, Mistral or any other LLMs through their existing apps.
That's what I'm talking about, really. Why would you buy a new iPhone to get functionality you can receive from the App Store?
I can see two reasons. You're either one of the evergreen sycophants that buys into Apple's security theater, or you're an obsessive Apple-maniac that will use any of their products no matter how bad they are. Those are two miniscule audiences, in the market of current and future iPhone owners. You would have to show me market research to convince me that even 5% of iPhone owners fall into either category.
So I'll ask again: does anyone really think an inferior local AI with access to your contacts list is going to drive upgrades? Mind you, in the EU Apple isn't even shipping these features because they have to mysteriously and arbitrarily prevent developers from offering competing AI integrations.
Apple's LLM is not a competitor for ChatGPT, Claude, Mistral etc.
It is an on-device model that has access to all of your private data e.g. health, contacts, mail, photos, messages etc. Something that no other LLM will ever get access to. Which means you can ask highly contextualised questions like "show me the photos I took on my last holiday". Again something no other LLM can do.
And it may not drive upgrades on its own but people asked for a better Siri and Apple unquestionably delivered on it.
Why? There's no technical reason it's impossible. LLMs don't need an internet connection or persistent local storage; Apple could safely run any LLM with personal data in a sandbox denied internet access. Running Llama or Phi on my data is no less secure than Apple's own local models.
Even if Apple does thwart antitrust efforts and becomes the new exclusive offline model provider for iPhone... how does that drive sales? People predisposed to avoid Siri aren't going to be enticed by an AI-powered upgrade, unless they wanted Siri to be wrong more often. These people have access to better LLMs for free, on any device they choose. The only thing Apple can leverage against them is handling the data they store on the device they own... something Apple is very obviously afraid to attempt in markets where they're already scrutinized.
Again, besides the perennial Apple investors I do not know a single iPhone owner that cares about anything you just said.
“Alexa, how much are you costing Amazon per user and how much do they want to charge me to revamp it?”
“Thank you for asking. Here is a top rated result”: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/06/hey-alexa...
Sorry, she meant to show you this: https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-mulls-5-10-monthly...
Not sure how it will affect this startup.
This is not directly in contradiction to what you said, but I feel like there’s a lot of confusion around this.
It has been a few years and my Android assistant is still dumb. I would have expected the iOS/Android assistants to be much better by now.
I am guessing its against their philosophy to release product that only works sometimes from the get go. Thats why they have been so demure about whole AI stuff.
But have you used Siri?
“Only works sometimes”, yes if all you ever ask is “what time is it”, what’s the weather, and maybe 5-6 other canned prompts.
Half the time it doesn’t even understand or catch what’s being said. (Mainly talking about the HomePod, it generally works fine on an iPhone)
Siri is a great example of Apple being perfectly fine letting a product languish so what might’ve been great 10 years ago is a punchline now.