Apple CEO Tim Cook warned against the overuse of artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT & Co when speaking to financial analysts in the early morning of Friday. He stressed that there are a “number of problems” that must be solved before complex AI tools can be integrated into products. Answering a question on Apple’s AI strategy during the announcement of Apple’s financial results, Cook said that the company will only integrate AI into its products on a “very careful basis”.
Cook pointed out that it is of the utmost importance to act in a “calm and prudent” manner, which is in contrast to some competitors like Microsoft who quickly deployed language models and AI tools for a mass audience. He did not further specify the particular issues that he has with the integration of AI into products. Nevertheless, the Apple CEO expressed his view on the “enormous potential” of machine learning and AI and mentioned current applications such as the fall detection feature of the Apple Watch and the ECG App as “integrated [into products] for many years”. Apple usually does not comment on product plans.
The rampant developments of AI, notably tools such as ChatGPT, have recently highlighted the significant limitations of Apple’s voice assistant Siri. It is deemed to be technologically outdated, functionally constrained and seems to evolve extremely slowly, with reportedly numerous discrepancies and feuds within the company. There have also been calls for the integration of an AI code assistant into the central development environment Xcode. Apple will present new updates to its operating systems and developer tools at the WWDC in early June, however there are yet no tangible rumours on a possible focus on AI.
