By Tim Bajarin , Forbes

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in 2024, Apple launched its AI strategy and named it "Apple Intelligence".

It’s a promising vision that has generated a lot of anticipation. However, in the year since its announcement, Apple has faced criticism for overpromising and underdelivering on its AI strategy.

Apple's AI strategy has been criticized for being late to the market, having limited cloud service capabilities, and over-emphasizing on-device processing. Critics say Apple lags behind OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft in basic AI research and large language model (LLM) development. Instead of building a strong AI platform early, Apple focused on privacy and hardware, leading to its reliance on partners, such as integrating ChatGPT into Siri.

Skeptics also point to Apple’s insistence on running AI models primarily on-device. While this approach protects privacy and increases speed, it limits the scale and complexity of AI capabilities compared to cloud-based systems. Some developers and analysts believe this limits Apple’s ability to deliver truly transformative AI experiences.

At the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in early June this year, Apple publicly admitted that many of the features promised when Apple Intelligence was released in 2024 have been postponed. Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, said: "We will continue to work hard to make Siri more personalized. This work will take more time to meet our high quality standards, and we look forward to sharing more information next year."

Open AI, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and other major manufacturers have their own LLM engines. But Apple needs to work with third parties and use their technology to integrate AI into its operating system and applications. In this case, Apple has partnered with Open AI and ChatGPT to add AI capabilities to MacOS and iOS.

When the plan was first announced, it was considered an ambitious one. Google has its own Gemini LLM, which means they can fine-tune AI integration into the Android system from the ground up. This gives Android an advantage in integrating AI into the mobile operating system.

While there may be a better approach, it’s interesting that Apple is doing something interesting. At least in the short term, they are building AI into their apps.

Apple has integrated Apple Intelligence into many of its apps. Here are some key examples:

photo:

• Cleanup Tool: This tool uses generative AI to remove unwanted objects or people from your photos.

• Recall: Apple Intelligence can help users turn photos and videos into movies based on their descriptions.

• Natural Language Search: Users can search photos and videos simply by describing what they are looking for.

mail:

• Prioritize mail: The Mail app can categorize incoming mail based on content and set a "Primary" category for important mail.

• Smart Reply: The AI-powered Smart Reply feature helps users reply to emails quickly and efficiently.

• Mail Summary: Apple Intelligence provides summaries of your mail and message conversations.

Messages and FaceTime:

• Real-time translation: Automatically translate messages in real time.

• Reduce distractions, focus mode: This focus mode uses AI to minimize distractions.

• Intelligent Breakthrough & Silencing: These features in Focus Mode help users filter notifications for more efficient management.

memorandum:

• Image Wand: This feature in the Apple Pencil tool panel allows users to convert freehand drawings into images and create images from text.

Shortcuts:

• Smart Actions: Apple Intelligence enables a new set of Smart Actions in Shortcuts, allowing users to leverage AI models to perform tasks like text summarization or image generation in their workflows.

Siri:

• Enhanced: Siri is even more powerful and intelligent thanks to integration with Apple Intelligence. It can now handle more complex queries, understand more text, and has a new look and feel.

• ChatGPT integration: Siri can access ChatGPT to respond to more complex tasks or questions.

Apple also allows other apps to take advantage of the on-device AI models at the Apple Intelligence core.

Apple’s rapid response to AI in its apps is critical, but some have rightly criticized it for limiting the scale and sophistication of AI capabilities compared to cloud systems, given the global reach of AI’s data.

This has led some analysts and media to believe that Apple needs to acquire an existing LLM company to help cope with the global expansion of AI. While this is an interesting idea, it is unlikely to come to fruition.

Apple is getting better at leveraging existing LLM partnerships and this strategy. In the process, Apple is developing its own LLM to gain the control it needs to keep customer data private and provide the kind of privacy protection that Apple products excel at.

Ed Handy, who conducted an in-depth analysis of Apple’s AI strategy in Cult of Mac magazine, believes that Apple’s slow rollout is not a crisis. He believes:

“Apple isn’t leading in AI, and most users won’t notice that AI is the hot technology of the 2020s, and Apple is even lagging behind in this field. OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot makes Apple’s Siri look like a high school science project. Google Gemini-generated images make Apple Image Playground-generated images look ridiculous. Apple originally planned to launch an enhanced version of Siri in a year, but now it seems that plan will be delayed. But none of this really matters. It really doesn’t matter.

Let’s look at Google’s Android operating system to see why. Android is ahead of the iPhone in terms of integrated AI features, but that hasn’t made users happier. The latest American Customer Satisfaction Index survey shows that Samsung users are 1% less satisfied with their Android smartphones than they were a year ago. Satisfaction with Google and Motorola Android phones both fell 3%. But the survey also found that iPhone users were 1% less satisfied. This means that cool new AI features, or the lack thereof, have no effect on how the average user feels about their phone.”

As someone who has been following Apple for over 40 years, I can personally attest that Apple has always marched to the beat of its own drum. And the way they roll out Apple Intelligence is not affected by outside criticism.

Apple has a history of creating new products and services. While some of the criticism has merit, Apple's approach to empowering its apps with AI capabilities is a solid strategy with plenty of room for innovation in the future.

Related reading: Overview of AI investment in the first half of 2025: 58% of global venture capital flows to AI