With the announcement of the new iPad Mini, Apple has made it clear that AI-filled software experiences are the way forward. And the company will still move forward, even if it means making similar internal upgrades to a tablet that costs almost half the price of its flagship phone.
But its ambitions with Apple Intelligence aren’t competitive, and even by Apple’s own standards, the experience fails to wow users. On top of that, the gradual rollout of the most ambitious AI features (many of which are still in the future) has left a bad impression on enthusiasts.
According to Apple’s own testing, the reason for the delay appears to be related to quality and performance. “Our research found that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was 25% more accurate and able to answer 30% more questions than Apple’s Siri,” the Bloomberg report said.
Please remember. Apple’s position on Siri is quite unique. For example, Siri has improved natural language understanding and better integration with apps and local files. However, there are some tasks that cannot be fully accomplished, and in those situations, queries are seamlessly offloaded to ChatGPT.
This is part of Apple’s deal with OpenAI. Siri and ChatGPT are completely different products, so it makes sense that Siri can’t perform the same types of internet-connected tasks as ChatGPT. However, Apple is deploying its OpenAI technology stack in more places than just Siri.
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT also helps users “understand images and documents.” Writing tools already built into tools like Notes and Safari also leverage the ChatGPT kitty. Furthermore, image generation is also handled by OpenAI technology.
One might think that the heavy reliance on ChatGPT is because Apple has not yet entered the leaderboards with its own AI technology stack comparable to Google’s Gemini and Meta. This assumption isn’t entirely far-fetched, and even Apple’s team seems to agree with it.
“In fact, some within Apple believe their generative AI technology is — at least for now — more than two years behind industry leaders,” the Bloomberg report adds. But it’s not just about progress, it’s also about the pace of deployment.
Take a look at Galaxy AI. This is Samsung’s take on the AI ecosystem that is already powering a wide range of smartphones and computing machines with the help of Google’s Gemini stack. Chinese smartphone makers have long offered generative AI features such as image generation and next-generation assistants.
For now, it seems almost certain that the strategy with Apple Intelligence was rushed to quell investor concerns that Apple was falling behind in the AI race. So far, everything we’ve seen from Apple’s “AI revolution” has been far from revolutionary.
So far, the best implementation of Apple Intelligence has been notification summarization and prioritization, but these are more practical features than anything that reimagines the software experience for users. It will be interesting to see how Apple injects new energy into its AI approach next year.
So far, the company has not made any such announcement, and even the promise made at a developer conference earlier this year has yet to materialize.
