Apple executives thought that AI would never catch on.
In September of last year Apple introduced the iPhone 16 series and promised that the new phones were “built for Apple Intelligence”. That was not entirely true and the whole AI fiasco at Apple has been many years in the making according to employees who work there.
For context, Apple Intelligence wasn’t even available when the iPhone 16 lineup came out. When it did eventually make its way to iOS it consisted of a very small number of the promised features. Apple has been slowly releasing more and more of what it initially showed off but the most important tool — a revamped Siri digital assistant — still remains missing.
There were a multitude of factors that led up to this failure but the two that stand out to me are the company’s executives and its commitment to user privacy.
AI didn’t just suddenly become a thing when OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot exploded in popularity a few years back. Major companies like Google, Meta and Amazon had been working on perfecting AI for years because they all saw that it was going to be a major aspect of computing in the near future.
However Apple executives — despite Steve Jobs’ fascination with Siri before his passing — apparently didn’t see what the hype was about. Senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, Craig Federighi, didn’t think AI would ever become anything important according to an employee.
Federighi remained reluctant to invest in AI. What’s even more tragic is that multiple other senior executives saw the potential of AI over a decade ago but when they tried to get Federighi on board he didn’t listen.
