The real reason Apple is being so quiet about AI and the new generation of iPhones

Unlike the hyper of other conventions, during this year’s product event, Apple largely avoided mentioning AI much at all. It was both curious and significant, writes Andrew Griffin

For years, Apple largely refused to even use the word “AI”. Instead, even as it used more and more of the technology, it referred to it as “proactive”, or if it was forced into using more technical terms it would refer to it as “machine learning”.

Then, last year, it changed its mind. At its Worldwide Developers Conference – the annual event in which it shows off new software features – it couldn’t stop saying the word. In a classic piece of stubborn branding, it said that it stood for “Apple Intelligence”, but that didn’t stop it referring to how many features it was introducing that used AI.

It was a mistake. The company had leaned into AI because it was being yelled at by investors and commentators, who said it was behind its competitors. But many of the promised features still haven’t actually arrived, which has simply made way for a new and perhaps even more damaging narrative: Apple is not only behind on artificial intelligence, it is less than transparent about it too. That was demonstrated clearly by longtime supportive Apple commentator John Gruber, who said that the affair showed there was “something rotten in the state of Cupertino”.

This year, Apple seemed to have learnt from those mistakes. Almost everything it showed should arrive within a matter of months, when it releases its big new software updates in September, and is available now in the early beta software that it distributes to developers. And the demonstrations it gave during its keynote address were really working – so much so that it sometimes dragged a little, since Apple seemed keen to show the slight lag that is required for them to work.

But it is developing a narrative that is now both more superficial and more significant. During the whole of this year’s event, it largely avoided saying the word AI much at all.

That wasn’t for want of features. It has new features that rely on AI, such as its translation tools. It has improved some of the existing AI features, such as its “Genmoji”, which allow people to make new emoji. And it is giving developers access to those AI technologies too, so that apps can take advantage of the iPhone’s in-built processing power to do their own artificial intelligence work.

But it described all of those tools as features, not as demonstrations of AI or its related technologies. This year, it went back to what it has always done best: make things that people want.

Take, for instance, the new Workout Buddy feature. (Don’t let the name put you off.) It is an AI-powered exercise cheerleader: before your workout, it will get you going with motivational data; during, it will call out important milestones or records; after, it will summarise your workout. It does all that in the energetic and positive – sometimes a little too energetic and positive – voice of a trainer from Apple’s Fitness+ online service.

Building it meant making an artificially intelligent data analysis system pick out interesting insights, building a total and convincing reconstruction of its Fitness+ trainers voices - putting up guardrails to ensure that it didn’t go suddenly start yelling at people for being lazy. It also ensured hat all of those technologies and more were able to run on an Apple Watch and the iPhone. It is a feat of engineering and one more practically useful than many of those from Apple’s competitors that are so often hailed to be so far ahead. But in its introduction, Apple deliberately didn’t shout or show off about AI much at all, instead showing a video of a woman on a run and the ways that it would encourage her.

Their narrative is about features, not the technology and that is how product introductions should be. It’s how Apple’s product introductions were, before people complained and criticised the company so much that it ended up relenting and building up its own hype.

None of this is to say that Apple isn’t behind. It doesn’t have a conversational model that is anything like as good as the one offered by OpenAI or its competitors. There are obvious ways of integrating AI into its offerings that are not happening yet. And its failure to deliver the big AI features it promised last year – most notably an upgrade to Siri that would enable it to become a real personal assistant, with knowledge of an individual’s context – have damaged trust in a way that might take years to recover from.

But Apple doesn’t necessarily need to do all of those things. As its executives pointed out in interviews this week, it hasn’t always been the creator of the technologies that have made its devices so valuable: it doesn’t have a search engine, or a social network. Instead, it offered a platform to build those things on, and became immensely rich doing so.

Apple might not manage to do that this time around. Its old creative lead, Jony Ive, is working with OpenAI to try and unseat it with a new AI-focused device, for instance. But nobody quite knows what the future looks like, and nobody really knows what anybody wants from AI. Until we do, Apple might do well to stick with staying quiet.