Late-Entrant Apple Can Turn Into The Biggest AI Player Overnight, Says Mark Gurman — Here's How Cupertino Can Emerge On Top

As Apple, Inc. AAPL investors look ahead to the annual World Wide Developers Conference scheduled to be held between June 10-14, Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman shed further light on the AI offerings the tech giant will likely unveil at the event.

Apple’s AI Challenge: Apple, given its pushback as a late-entrant in the AI race, will likely unveil a different approach to the technology, Gurman said in his latest installment of his weekly “Power On” newsletter on Sunday The company will proably focus on tools that ordinary consumers can use in their daily lives, he said.

“The idea is to appeal to a user's practical side — and leave some of the more whiz-bang features to other companies,” Gurman said.

The Apple specialist noted that unveiling AI after major announcements from Microsoft, Alphabet and OpenAI will make it difficult for Apple to convince consumers and investors that it has been making exciting advancements in AI.

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What’s In The Cards? Apple is likely to spend a good portion of the WWDC laying out its AI-related features, said Gurman. He flagged Project Greymatter as the core of the new strategy. It consists of a set of AI tools that Apple will integrate into core apps like Safari, Photos and Notes as well as operating system features such as enhanced notifications, he said.

Delving into the processing for AI features, Gurman said much of the less-computing-intensive features will run on the device and those requiring more horsepower will “be pushed to the cloud.” The on-device features will be supported by iPhone, iPad and Mac chips released in the last year or so, he said. The cloud component will be powered by the M2 Ultra chips located in data centers, he added.

New capabilities in the works this year, according to Gurman, include ones that:

• Can transcribe voice memos
• Can retouch photos with AI
• Can make searches faster
• Will improve Safari web search
• Will automatically suggest replies to emails and text messages
• Will upgrade the Siri personal assistant, “with more natural-sounding interactions based on Apple's own large language models”

Gurman also noted that a more advanced Siri will likely come to the Apple Watch “for the on-the-go tasks.” Developer tools, including Xcode, are additionally getting AI enhancements, he added.

Apple will also bring generative AI to emojis, developing a software that can create custom emojis based on what people text, Gurman said. Also, the company is working to revamp the iPhone’s home screen by creating short recaps of missed notifications and individual text messages, “as well as of web pages, news articles, documents, notes and other forms of media,” he added.

No Leapfrogging: Gurman noted that most of Apple’s AI features will be “purely catch-up,” adding that “there’s no leapfrogging here.” He noted that Google has many of the same AI features in its Pixel devices, and Samsung Electronics uses Google Gemini.

Apple will announce at WWDC a partnership with OpenAI for the chatbot, the columnist said.

“The owners of those devices will probably at least try out the new capabilities (the technology may be integrated tightly enough that people won't even notice they're using them). That could turn Apple into the biggest AI player overnight.”

Apple ended Friday’s session up 1.66% at $189.98, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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Read Link: Apple’s WWDC Announcements May Not Be As ‘Impressive’ As OpenAI, Google, Says Gurman: ‘They Can Improve Their AI Technology Quickly And Keep Wowing Users’

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