This weekend, Bloomberg published a pretty lengthy inside look at Artificial Intelligence at Apple, and why the world’s most valuable company is struggling so hard to make AI happen.

Back in 2018, Apple hired Google’s own AI head, John Giannandrea. He’s a pretty well-known figure in the industry and has been running Google’s search and AI groups. He was responsible for deploying new AI features in Photos, Translate and Gmail. This helped give Google a reputation as a leader in AI, along with the acquisition of DeepMind.

This was obviously a huge move for Apple. Grabbing one of Google’s biggest employees to head up their AI efforts.

Seven years in, all of the hype that came with the Giannandrea hire is gone. Most importantly, Apple’s AI has fallen further behind. Of course, Apple wasn’t the only one that was caught off guard with OpenAI’s ChatGPT launch back in 2022. But Google has since caught up, and in some regards, surpassed it.

Siri was further behind than expected

At WWDC last year, Apple announced a slew of AI features, including a revamped Siri. This new Siri would be more contextually-aware, and maybe even useful. Apple was targeting an April 2025 launch for Siri, but when Craig Federighi, who’s the senior vice president of software engineering, began running an early version of the beta on his own phone just weeks before launch, he was shocked to see how many of the features Apple touted simply didn’t work.

The rollout was then delayed until May, and then delayed indefinitely. This also kicked off some class-action lawsuits by iPhone 16 buyers. These buyers were told their phones would have all of these AI features, which might not even launch on the iPhone 16, at this point.

Bloomberg spoke with multiple people at Apple about this, and one senior member of the AI team said “this is a crisis.” While another compared it to a foundering ship: “It’s been sinking for a long time.”

Being late to a new technology like AI isn’t new for Apple. They are typically fashionably late with new technologies. But this is on a whole new level.

AI is part of a deeper problem at Apple

Let’s face it, the iPhone and other Apple products have incredible hardware. And its software gets updated many times throughout the year, though it only gets one meaningful update in September. AI is proving that to be too long of a wait for an update. With AI updating sometimes multiple times a day.

In the past, Apple has relied more on technologies developed in-house, for a successful product. But with AI, they were partially relying on OpenAI by using ChatGPT to help with Siri.

This continued failure on AI could likely doom many of Apple’s plans for the future. This includes the rumored AR glasses, robots and other products.

Apple employees couldn’t convince Federighi that AI was the future

All the way back in 2014, many of the senior executives overseeing software engineering thought that Apple should make AI more prominent on iOS. However, they were unable to convince Federighi that AI should be taken seriously. Saying that “a lot of it fell on deaf ears.”

To its credit, Apple did start to acquire dozens of smaller AI businesses to help support its effort in the area.

Apple Intelligence wasn’t even an idea before ChatGPT launched in 2022. Showing you just how far behind Apple truly was. The company was blindsided by the launch and success of ChatGPT.

Federighi used ChatGPT to write code for a personal software project he was working on. Which set off a lightbulb for the executive. He then demanded that Apple’s 2024 iPhone software release – iOS 18 – have as many AI features as possible.

Giannandrea is blamed with most of the AI failure

Currently, much of the blame for delays and false starts for Apple’s AI initiatives are on Giannandrea. It’s being said that he’s found it difficult to fit in with the members of Apple’s inner-most circle. While others say that Giannandrea is not hands-on enough nd doesn’t drive his workers particularly hard.

Apple’s commitment to privacy is also an issue for AI at the company. There’s currently 2.35 billion active devices for Apple, that’s more than any of its competitors. But Apple is much stricter than Google, Meta and OpenAI about allowing AI researchers to access its customers data. This also extends to non-customers. This has left Apple’s researchers heavily reliant on datasets it is able to license from third parties and on so-called synthetic data-artificial data created expressly to train AI.

Apple is also facing some unique external challenges. Mainly from the EU, who is forcing Apple to change its operating systems, so that users can change from Siri as their default assistant.

Giannandrea was also stripped of all control over product development, including the programs for Siri engineering and future robotics devices. This came after Cook lost faith in Giannandrea.

Apple is focusing on upgrading existing Apple Intelligence features in iOS 19

According to sources at Apple, the company is focusing on upgrading existing Apple Intelligence features for iOS 19, which is set to be announced next month at WWDC. Including an AI-optimized battery management mode and a virtual health coach.

Apple is also planning to separate the Apple Intelligence brand from Siri, despite Apple building its own LLM Siri.

Bloomberg also notes that Apple is going to stop announcing features more than a few months before their official launch. As the features showcased last year at WWDC were all mockups, not real, working features.

This article first appeared on Android Headlines

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