It's the "hottest and most widely telegraphed partnership in Silicon Valley," said the Financial Times, after Apple CEO Tim Cook announced on Monday a venture with artificial intelligence pioneer OpenAI. The tie-up, announced at Apple's annual developer conference, integrates AI into iPhones by embedding a suite of models into the operating system, under the "catch-all term" of Apple Intelligence.Â
Pledge to improve 'human existence'Â The new features "showed off" by Apple can read your calendar, check traffic on routes, reschedule a meeting, draft a message to contacts, summarize articles, rewrite emails or sort texts according to priority, said Katelyn Chedraoui on CNet. "Groundbreaking" this is not.Â
But think of Apple's plans as a "top-to-bottom makeover" of the iPhone, said David Ingram, a tech reporter at NBC News. The idea is that using AI on the devices will seem "so normal that sometimes you might not even notice it's there."Â
"I get excited about helping people do things faster, better, higher quality," Cook said to The Washington Post. "Anything that improves the human existence. And I think AI can do that again, subject to keeping the rails on it appropriately."Â
Privacy problems Tesla and X boss Elon Musk criticized the new features as an "unacceptable security violation." The billionaire accused Apple, without evidence, of "turning over user data" to OpenAI and warned that if the plan goes ahead, Apple devices "will be banned at my companies."Â
Apple said the new system would be "rooted in privacy," with many features confined to the iPhone, without users' data ever leaving it. But the row "reflects the diverging views surrounding AI and how quickly the technology is being developed and implemented," said Sky News.Â
Winning the 'consumer AI game'Â For Apple, AI is "not a separate service to sell but a way to make its core product, the iPhone, more attractive," said NBC News. By naming the system Apple Intelligence, the company is seemingly "trying to redefine 'AI' from an initialism for artificial intelligence" to one that refers to Apple itself.Â
And that puts Apple in a powerful position, because those popular devices have "invaluable data," said Dan Ives, the managing director of Wedbush Securities. Apple "will win the consumer AI game." |