According to the Wall Street Journal, Siri is one of the dumbest chatbots on the market. Apple hopes to revive its AI business through a reboot. Next week, Apple will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and is expected to unveil a "modern version of Siri" that is closer to ChatGPT. The old version of Siri will be abandoned. For a long time, the functions of the old version of Siri were extremely limited, so that even if many people used it, they were limited to basic functions such as setting alarms.


Siri

The new version of Siri is built on Google's Gemini technology and is expected to provide a more modern search experience, with the ability to remember users' previous queries and access data on their devices to provide personalized responses. Apple is also expected to launch a standalone Siri application and introduce paid premium features like its rivals.

The key question is whether the new version of Siri and other operating system updates will put Apple on a path to bring generative AI to the masses and leverage its powerful assets. Although Apple has lagged behind its competitors in the field of AI for several years, its strong ecosystem and user base may give it a market advantage of "catch up from behind".

"I think Apple will win in the AI ​​field," said Ron Johnson, who served as Apple's retail chief under Steve Jobs. "Mobile phones are the main device for people to use AI. And Apple is working with the right partners to bring unique AI experiences to mobile phones."


Cook

Apple CEO Tim Cook has used the company's dominance in the device field to build the company into a toll booth: on the one hand, it collects tens of billions of dollars in annual fees from applications so that the applications can reach consumers; on the other hand, it obtains an equivalent amount of revenue from Google to make it the default search engine in Safari.

Advantages of mobile phones

Today, the AI ​​that most consumers are exposed to is just a more advanced online search. However, Anthropic's business has experienced explosive growth driven by the large number of professionals using Claude to complete a variety of tasks. This shows that the future of AI will also extend to ordinary consumers, and smartphones will become advanced assistants capable of performing similar tasks.

In the future, a smartphone might be able to make restaurant reservations on its own because it has the user’s schedule and understands their dietary restrictions; it might be able to hail a cab because it knows the user’s home address and has stored credit card information. As smartphone agents invoke online services directly on the user's behalf, the applications themselves may become "abstracted."

In this future scenario, Apple’s key advantage is that the iPhone already knows everything about its users. Companies that have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in training the most advanced AI models and hoping to reach consumers will most likely have to go through Apple to reach users.


iPhone is an AI carrier

Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan said in a recent note to investors that Apple could become a marketplace for app operations. Today, apps compete for downloads and user time. In the future, they may compete to become services called by smartphone assistants. For example, if Uber wanted Siri to prioritize it when users requested a ride, it would likely have to charge Apple Pay a hefty fee.

In order to control its own destiny, OpenAI teamed up with former Apple design genius Jony Ive to develop its own AI equipment. Last fall, it also launched an app store strategy. But so far, its apps strategy has made little splash, and it seems unlikely to launch a device that will convince consumers to abandon their iPhones.

How to implement intelligent AI?

Apple has previously promised to launch a smarter Siri. Two years ago, it said the chatbot would be able to interact with messages and apps and understand the content of a user's screen. However, Apple failed to deliver on these features and was forced to settle a class-action lawsuit.

"The serious challenge facing Apple is its ability to translate its Apple Intelligence capabilities, which may remain imaginary, into products or services that people will actually use." Craig Moffett, an analyst at securities research firm MoffettNathanson, wrote in a note to investors.

In fact, all of Apple's advantages will be insignificant if it cannot provide powerful AI to guide iPhone users into this new world. Ironically, when Siri launched as a standalone app 16 years ago, its co-founders originally envisioned it as an intelligent assistant capable of completing tasks, such as making reservations at a restaurant. However, Apple failed to realize this vision after acquiring the app. Apple has struggled to modernize Siri, and after years of hard work, it eventually had to turn to Google to provide back-end technology.

Another advantage of Apple in the field of AI: its emphasis on user privacy protection is also a limitation. On the one hand, this stance enhances consumer trust and makes users more willing to share personal information with Apple rather than other companies that are believed to abuse or sell data; but on the other hand, Apple also hides user information from the company itself, which increases the difficulty for Apple engineers to train better AI models.

Apple's difficulty in obtaining memory supplies will be another challenge. In the future, iPhones will need more memory to run complex AI models "on the device side" to avoid uploading user data to the cloud. However, AI chip makers like Nvidia are consuming large amounts of memory, causing memory prices to skyrocket.

Last year, Apple announced the retirement of the head of its AI division over his failure to improve Siri. Today, Apple has no excuses for not delivering on its promises.