Right now, the main AI companies on the market are Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta with a few honorary mentions like Anthropic and Perplexity. Apple will soon join that group, but only when it fully realizes Apple Intelligence. Most of the industry says that Apple was late to the AI game, but the company’s CEO, Tim Cook, believes otherwise. In an interview, he told Wired that Apple wasn’t late to AI.
We’ve known that Google was a major AI company for a while. Even before the generative AI boom, the company delivered some powerful AI tools like Google Assistant, Google Lens, and so on. Sure, Apple had Siri, but it wasn’t quite as powerful as Assistant. This makes sense because Apple is primarily a hardware company. It didn’t have as much of a reason to hunker down on its AI technology because the iPhone was always where the money was.
Even after the generative AI boom a few years ago, Apple still dragged its feet with releasing an AI product. We got the Apple Intelligence announcement earlier this year, yes, but we won’t see it fully realized until next year. So, it’s safe to say that Apple is behind the curve with AI. Or is it?
Tim Cook says that Apple isn’t behind the curve with AI
Wired just held an interview with Tim Cook where he answered questions about AI, dispelled rumors about OpenAI, and talked about AR. During the interview, Wired’s Steven Levy asked “When did you first understand generative AI was going to be a very big deal?”
Tim Cook responded by talking about how excitement for AI built up over the years, “I wouldn’t say there was an aha moment. It built like a wave, or like rolling thunder.” He then hit us with a pretty surprising fact. “Back in 2017 we built a neural engine into our products.” That was back when the iPhone X devices hit the market. “It was already apparent that AI and machine learning were huge. It became obvious that we had to divert lots of people to it, that it would be a new era for our products,” he continued.
So, it looks like Apple realized the utility of AI even back then.
Tim Cook also talked about not charging for AI
Another thing on people’s minds is whether Apple will charge for its AI features down the road. Recent rumors state that Apple will eventually charge people to use some of the more advanced Apple Intelligence features. However, we don’t have any concrete evidence of that.
It looks like the company might not take that route; Tim Cook himself said so. Levey asked “Some companies charge for AI-enhanced services. Did you consider that?”
Cook responded: “We never talked about charging for it. We view it sort of like multitouch, which enabled the smartphone revolution and the modern tablet.” That’s a pretty unique way of putting it, but it makes sense. It seems that Apple views AI as a generally beneficial feature like multi-touch. Imagine if companies charged you to use more than one finger on your smartphone!
If Apple indeed doesn’t charge for its AI tools, then that will give it a huge leg up over Galaxy AI. Samsung’s AI platform will most likely start charging by the end of 2025. With some of Samsung’s most powerful AI features locked behind a paywall, people might turn to Apple’s implementation.
