There’s a lot in play for next week’s WWDC 2024 keynote. The stakes of the presentation are much higher than your typical moves in the post-event market. The pressure on Tim Cook and crew to deliver is, in a very real sense, even greater than it was before last year’s Vision Pro announcement.
On Monday, Apple will unveil its plans for artificial intelligence. The issue has been a huge question mark looming over Cupertino in recent years as competitors like Google and Microsoft have embraced genetic artificial intelligence. There is a broad industry consensus that systems powered by large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini will profoundly affect the way we interact with our devices.
Apple is expected to announce a partnership with OpenAI that will bring the company’s smarts to iPhones and Macs. Apple’s near-term strategy is a deep integration between existing properties and genetic AI, with Siri at the center. Since its debut in 2011, Apple has pushed to make the voice assistant an integral part of all its operating systems.
In the intervening 13 years, however, Siri has not lived up to the revolution Apple promised. There are many reasons for this, although the main one is skill. The idea of an artificial voice assistant predates Siri by decades, but no one completely cracked it for some reason. As phone manufacturers and app developers have turned smartphones into all-purpose devices, the jobs of these assistants have become increasingly complex.
Impressive as the of the Stanford Research Institute job it was, the technology required for a frictionless experience just wasn’t ready. Siri co-founder Norman Winarsky address it underlying issue in 2018, noting that Apple’s original plan was a much more limited Assistant that handled things like entertainment and travel. “These are hard problems, and when you’re a company dealing with up to a billion people, the problems get even harder,” Winarsky noted at the time. “They’re probably looking for a level of perfection that they can’t reach.”
Generative AI isn’t at that level of perfection either — not yet, at least. Hallucinations are still a problem. That’s exactly why, even after the huge buzz of the last few years, we still feel like we’re very much in the baby phase. If anything, I would say that Google, for example, has been overly aggressive in places. The best example of this is the company’s decision to display Gemini results at the top of searches.
When something is prioritized over trusted resources on the world’s dominant search engine, it needs to fix things as much as possible and not, you know, tell people to eat glue. Google tags Gemini as a “Search Labs” product, but surely most users don’t understand what that means in terms of product maturity, nor can they be bothered to click through for more information.
In recent years, I have come across several researchers who have used the term “magic” to describe the “black box” effects that surround large language models. This isn’t a knock on all the amazing work happening in the space, so much as a realization that there’s still so much we don’t know about the technology.
Arthur C. Clarke put it best: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
However, one place where Google has been more deliberate is the integration of Gemini into Android. Instead of replacing Assistant entirely, Google has integrated its productive AI platform into different apps. Users can also choose to set Gemini as the default by assigning it to the Assistant button on Pixel devices. This implementation requires deliberate action on the part of the user at least so far.
While Gemini hasn’t completely taken over Android yet, however, Google is clearly signaling a day in the not-too-distant future when it will completely replace Assistant. I was half expecting an announcement along these lines at I/O last month, though I’m glad it finally chose to give Gemini more time to bake.
Whether the Assistant name stays is ultimately a branding decision. For its part, Apple is very wedded to the Siri name. After all, he spent over a decade introducing the product to consumers. Sooner or later, however, genetic AI will eat into the smart assistant space.
Voice assistants in general are having an existential moment. Smart speakers have a wider bell for platforms like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. Shipments have decreased, after heating up during the pandemic. It is unfair to call the charge doomed, but it will be long term, without a proper shot in the arm.
Generative AI is poised to be the logical successor, but the first round of hardware devices built around those models, including the Humane Ai Pin and Rabbit R1, were just proof of how far the category has to go to be considered a consistent experience for basic users.
Apple will finally show its hand on Monday. While the company is rumored to have shifted a number of employees to productive AI operations following the debacle of its electric car, all signs point to Apple having conceded a significant lead to the competition. As such, its most logical play is a partnership with a dominant force like OpenAI.
Shortly after announcing the Siri acquisition, Steve Jobs was asked if the company was trying to beat Google at its own game. “It’s an artificial intelligence company,” Jobs noted. “We will not get into the prospecting business. We are not interested. Others do it well.”
The company’s approach to genetic AI is currently at the same point. At this stage, Apple can’t beat OpenAI at its own game, so it’s partnering. But even the best of the current models have a way to go before they’re ready to fully replace the current crop of smart assistants.
