[simonh]

It's just a broad term for whatever AI integration they put into their various Apps and services. So, a combination of the neural engine stuff they've been doing for years, and integration with white label AI services from Google or OpenAI.

Siri is basically unchanged, it looks like they have had serious problems getting LLMs, or generative AI in general to be reliable and 'safe' enough to put their own name on it. By 'safe' I mean thinks like not generating emails based on Mein Kampf, or doodles of genitals, or hallucinating false 'facts'.

Not a concern for many of the frontier AI providers with no reputation to burn, but not exactly on-brand for Apple. I very much doubt Jobs would have viewed that differently.

[mr_toad]

Hallucinations and other errors are a real problem. I’ve tried tinkering with Shortcuts (which get you more direct access the models) to generate AI responses to messages and emails, but it’s unreliable. The biggest problem is it has trouble distinguishing between people, confusing me with the person I’m conversing with, or with third parties.

[limflick]

How good is AI integration in Apple products? Did they drop the ball as hard as Microsoft did? I naively assumed a few years ago that Microsoft could pull it off perfectly because they had more than enough in terms of resources & engineers (yes, I was this naive in college)

[evilduck]

Like most MS vs. Apple differences, it comes down to a matter of taste. They've added quite a few AI enhancements across their apps and operating system, but they are mostly feature enhancements and not major AI branded efforts. Having a Summarize button in Mail.app where it's contextually relevant or having text improvement menu options in text fields vs. slapping a major "Copilot" tab into everything.

Their use of AI so far has been much less "let AI take the wheel and brand it as a product itself" and more "use AI to improve an aspect of <user need>".

[limflick]

I think that's the best thing they could have done as a company. Sounds like the end-user first philosophy is still there.

[mr_toad]

It’s very limited. Only a few buttons to push, unless you roll up your sleeves. For instance there’s a button to have it summarise an email, but having it search through all your emails requires writing scripts.