AI announcements were limited to incremental features and upgrades despite growing pressure on Apple to up its game against its competitors. The event was deemed a disappointment as there was little AI progress, no major Siri updates and minimal advanced language model integration.
"Apple Intelligence, and AI more broadly, was the elephant in the room at WWDC,” said Ben Wood, Chief Analyst, CCS Insight. “Apple was keen to stress that its strategy in AI is the correct one for the company, but the spectacular growth of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s relentless focus on Gemini, particularly on Android smartphones, is beginning to contrast sharply with Apple's more cautious and incremental approach.”
Apple did announce a revamped software design called Liquid Glass, new phone and camera apps as well as new features on Apple Watch and Vision Pro but its failure to address AI was seen by many as a missed opportunity.
There were a number of new Apple Intelligence-powered features including live translation, a real-time language translation feature that will be integrated into messages, FaceTime and the Phone app as a well as a new fitness app called Workout Buddy, which uses an AI-generated voice to speak to you during your workouts – but little else was announced.
At last year’s WWDC, Apple unveiled a number of AI upgrades to Siri that were intended to make the virtual assistant more personable and dynamic, however, they have yet to be released in spite of specific commitments from Apple.
The company’s silence on Siri was “deafening”, according to Forrester’s VP principal analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee. “Apple continues to tweak its Apple Intelligence features, but no amount of text corrections or cute emojis can fill the yawning void of an intuitive, interactive AI experience.”
Apple did announce a partnership with ChatGPT, seen by many as an attempt to catch up with OpenAI, Microsoft and Google in terms of AI and some analysts said that for Apple to compete it might have to look at making further such agreements and may also have to consider acquisitions if it wanted to ‘jumpstart’ its AI strategy and start making some money from it.
