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Welcome to another issue of Geek AI.

Today we'll be discussing why it's our opinion Apple's upcoming AI will disappoint hardcore artificial intelligence enthusiasts.

Let’s dive in.

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Week before last a flurry of news came out regarding Apple's highly anticipated AI release.

While I won't bore you with the details, it appears they're putting most of their focus on two of their best-selling devices: the iPhone and Macbook.

In particular, it appears AI will be rolled out to iPhones via the upcoming iOS 18 update, while Macbooks (which were just released) already have Apple's newest and "most AI capable" chip on the market: the M3.

After watching a couple videos, including this one in particular, I can't say whether I'm excited for the upcoming release or not.

For the average consumer, who doesn't use text-generation apps like ChatGPT or Claude - or image-gen apps like Midjourney, Photoleap or Remini - it's likely their minds will be blown by their devices' new abilities.

Especially as it relates to photo editing, writing text messages and emails faster, and Apple's impressive but silly video generation feature. All of which are discussed in the video mentioned above.

With that said, as someone who's deep in the trenches using and testing new apps every single week, it doesn't like Apple is going to deliver anything shockingly new or revolutionary.

Yes, they're working on a 200-billion parameter LLM (known as AJAX GPT) that's meant to rival ChatGPT and Gemini.

The problem?

According to the limited amount of information that's been released, its abilities are on par with ChatGPT 3.5.

On the flip side, OpenAI is already working on versions 5, 6 and 7, while both Gemini and Claude have beat ChatGPT 4 on a variety of standardized tests.

Meaning, Apple's GPT is going to be multiple generations behind today's most impressive AI text generators. Sigh.

Second, while not having to pay for a 3rd party AI-editing app would be great, it's unclear exactly what Apple's Photo App will and will not be capable of.

For now, images show it's able to add objects to existing images and adjust photo-editing settings like Contrast and Saturation. For the average user who doesn't know how to use Lightroom or Photoshop (which in all honesty is the general public), this could be impressive.

But it's unlikely to outperform Lightroom's free Auto Optimize feature.

While I'm glossing over some of the less impressive/useful features, all in all, it appears Apple's upcoming AI is meant to make the use of their phones, computers, watches and tablets more enjoyable. Which makes sense:

Apple's a hardware company.

While Google, Microsoft and OpenAI generate the lion's share of their revenue from SaaS, Apple's hundreds of billions in revenue come from iPhone, Mac, iWatch and iPad sales.*

*With their iCloud, App Store and other services driving approximately 25% of their annual revenues.

In short, while services like ChatGPT and Gemini battle to attract everyone from consumers to enterprise-level businesses, the only thing Apple cares about is selling more devices.*

*This is not entirely true as Services are Apple's most profitable sector (helping to compensate for slowing hardware sales). But generally speaking, Apple is not going to pivot to become a consumer-facing SaaS company.

Further, given their target market includes retired grandmas, Fortune 500 executives, and 10-year-olds getting their first phones, focusing on and perfecting AI for one specific use case would be near impossible.

Instead, Apple's AI is likely to be a mediocre Jack of All Trades.

Impressive if you've never used a high-performance app like Leonardo or Claude 3 Opus.

But if you're deep in the trenches with this stuff, don't get your hopes up.

💡Wrap Up: While Apple has the brainpower and budget to compete with companies like OpenAI, at the end of the day they're a hardware company. And because of that, it's likely any AI-powered features they release will be geared toward making their devices more pleasurable to use.

🤔Thought-Provoking Question: Will Apple's AI release live up to the hype or disappoint? Would you upgrade your device to get access to it?

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