Apple’s existing AI assistant, Siri, has a similar reputation — this time, by starting as something fantastic and quickly becoming something of a joke when compared to competing services. Apple Intelligence was meant to change that, but the latest delay threatens to make it worse, cementing in public opinion the idea that Apple doesn’t know how to do AI at the very worst moment in industry evolution.
An unforced error?
We know that Apple recognizes the importance of AI. That’s why the company has been promoting Apple Intelligence so urgently in nearly all its hardware advertising. (That includes the ads the company pulled over the weekend promoting the now delayed contextual intelligence in Siri.) Hoping that the future would seem better tomorrow, Apple bet its marketing push on services it hadn’t yet made.
Apple’s hype machine sang out the coming benefits of Apple Intelligence loudly. While the choir sang, teams inside the company made progress on preparing the company’s ecosystem for the new AI features. That included introducing entry-level products equipped with enough memory to run the promised new AI features. Outside Apple, the company was energetically promoting the new features among customers and developers and maintaining belief in the company trajectory among its customers and advocates.
This story originally appeared on Computerworld
