Apple is losing the AI race and might never recover

Something is rotten in the state of Cupertino. After the announcement of Apple Intelligence as a central part of iOS 18, it seemed like Apple finally jumped on the AI bandwagon before it got left behind.

However, things have not gone according to plan. When iOS 18 launched, all of Apple Intelligence’s key functionality was missing, and even now, some of the most significant features still haven’t arrived. We were led to believe they were imminent, with most pundits expecting the long-overdue upgrade to Siri to arrive with iOS 18.4 in April.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, however, the feature was initially pushed back to iOS 18.5, and now an Apple spokesperson has confirmed that the more advanced version of Siri might not arrive until next year at the earliest. With Apple’s artificial intelligence plans in disarray, the company is in danger of being entirely left behind.

Apple has a history of arriving late but winning the game

Being the best rather than the first has worked well so far

Apple / Pocket-lint

It’s a cliché, but for a good reason. Apple is notorious for rarely being the first to create a product, but often manages to make something far more popular than what’s come before.

The iPod, for example, was far from being the first MP3 player, but Apple’s version became incredibly popular. The company then repeated that success with the iPhone, bringing the smartphone into the mainstream and earning the company huge success.

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Apple didn’t make the first tablet, wireless earbuds, smartwatch, or Bluetooth tracker, but its version of these products have all been very successful.

Apple seriously dropped the ball with AI

The company has been incredibly slow to react

With such a track record, it’s a genuine surprise that Apple has not been able to repeat the same feat with AI. If it were to follow the same trend, you would expect Apple to be a little late to the party, but then drop a genuinely competitive platform that would make a lot of money.

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It just hasn’t happened, however. The company appears to have been caught completely flat-footed by the way that AI burst onto the scene. However, rather than scrambling to catch up and get a piece of the pie like many of its competitors have, Apple seems to have rested on its laurels, only to find that it had fallen way behind the pack.

Apple has put a lot of money into AI since then, but it started far too late. Currently, the company is nowhere near catching up with its competitors.

Apple Intelligence is far from a success

The current AI features are mostly underwhelming

Apple Intelligence is a case in point. Apple made AI the key focus of its announcement of iOS 18, even going as far as to try to re-frame what those two ubiquitous letters stood for by replacing “artificial” with “Apple.”

The reality is that Apple Intelligence can only be described as disappointing. First, the iPhone 16 launched with a total of zero Apple Intelligence features available. Not a single one. It was only with the release of iOS 18.1 more than a month later that the initial AI features finally arrived.

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And when they did release, they were underwhelming. One major benefit of several Apple Intelligence features compared to many rivals is that they run locally rather than via the cloud. However, in terms of what the features can do, there’s simply nothing new.

Many of the features feel a little gimmicky, such as the Image Playground image generation tool and Genmoji, which lets you generate your own custom emoji. Apple Intelligence’s writing tools are fine, but they don’t have anything other AI chatbots haven’t already been doing for some time.

The Clean Up tool and notification summaries are probably the most useful features, but neither of these are ground-breaking or something you’d miss if you didn’t have it. The whole time, however, there has been the promise that something potentially very useful was just around the corner.

The updated Siri was supposed to be a major iOS 18 feature

Now, it might not be part of iOS 18 at all

Apple / Pocket-lint 

Siri was truly exciting when it first burst onto the scene, but the voice assistant never really developed in the way that people hoped. Siri in iOS 17 didn’t feel much more capable than the original version was. However, all of that was meant to change in iOS 18.

First, Siri was billed to get smarter by integrating with ChatGPT. However, when you stop to think about that for a second, you realize how bizarre it is. Apple is improving Siri by letting you use another company’s AI chatbot when Siri can’t cope. It’s a bit like selling a Mac that lets you run Windows when you need to access your clipboard history because macOS can’t do it.

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The most significant change, however, was supposed to arrive as part of iOS 18.4. This was billed as the biggest upgrade to Siri since the voice assistant was launched. It would mean that Siri would be able to take action within apps and even across multiple apps, as well as have better contextual understanding.

Apple gave examples of things you would be able to ask Siri to do, such as “Play that podcast Jamie mentioned” or “Send the photos from the barbecue on Saturday to Malia.” You would even be able to quickly find information by asking things such as, “When is Mom’s flight landing?” Siri would be able to understand the intent of the query, know where to find the relevant information and complete the request, all without you lifting a finger.

This was the one feature of Apple Intelligence I was most excited about. However, it seems that Apple is struggling to get it to work. First the feature was pushed back to iOS 18.5, and now it might not arrive until next year at the earliest.

All of Apple’s competitors are way ahead

Even Alexa is getting smarter

A major problem for Apple is that almost all of its competitors are so far ahead that they’re almost out of sight. Google’s Gemini can hold natural conversations on Android phones, which makes Siri seem embarrassingly bad. Even with ChatGPT’s help, Siri still feels impossibly outdated.

It’s not just rival smartphones that Apple needs to worry about, either.

Companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic continue to release more powerful versions of their AI models. Even Amazon, which has struggled to deliver its AI-powered Alexa, has finally got a working version with impressive capabilities.

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Apple hasn’t always been the first to launch products, but it’s never really felt like the company was totally left behind. With AI, however, it genuinely feels like that might be the case.

Apple may struggle to make up the lost ground

The rapid pace of AI developments won’t help Apple catch up

The biggest concern for Apple, however, is that the pace of development in AI is incredibly fast. The impressive capabilities of DeepSeek had even major players like OpenAI scrambling to keep up, and these are companies that are at the forefront of AI.

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Even if Apple ups its game and starts to make significant strides in AI, it’s so far behind the others that it’ll have streaked off even further into the distance by the time it’s caught up with where they are now. Trying to outpace the development of its rivals to close the gap will be incredibly hard. The one thing on the tech giant’s side is that it’s not short of money to throw at the problem, but Apple may still have a serious fight on its hands to ever catch up.