Apple’s hitting its AI stride right as competition is slowing

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How to make Apple Intelligence images on iPhone

Apple Intelligence just arrived last month, and some of its most exciting features will arrive with iOS 18.2 in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, a new report indicates Apple’s major AI competitors are hitting speed bumps with their growth. It seems Apple may be hitting its AI stride at just the right moment.

The age-old narrative that’s starting to change

It happens all the time. Tech giants ship exciting new technology while Apple’s projects stay veiled in R&D, leading to the constant narrative that the company is ‘behind’ in that area.

With AI, that story may have actually had some truth to it—but things are starting to change.

Apple shipped major AI features to potentially hundreds of millions of devices with iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1 last month.

The next wave of Apple Intelligence—including the highly anticipated Genmoji, Image Playground, and ChatGPT integration—will arrive in just a few weeks with iOS 18.2.

Apple is quickly catching up in AI. Even if its models aren’t as sophisticated as the competition, it’s doing what Apple does best: making compelling consumer products, not just compelling tech.

Before the end of the year, I have no doubt Apple’s AI features—especially what’s coming in 18.2—will become more mainstream than any other existing AI product.

And all of this success comes at a time when competitors like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are reportedly hitting speed bumps with their progress.

Slowdowns for Apple’s biggest AI competitors

Rachel Metz, Shirin Ghaffary, Dina Bass, and Julia Love write for Bloomberg:

OpenAI was on the cusp of a milestone. The startup finished an initial round of training in September for a massive new artificial intelligence model that it hoped would significantly surpass prior versions of the technology behind ChatGPT and move closer to its goal of powerful AI that outperforms humans. But the model, known internally as Orion, did not hit the company’s desired performance

[…]

After years of pushing out increasingly sophisticated AI products at a breakneck pace, three of the leading AI companies are now seeing diminishing returns from their costly efforts to build newer models. At Alphabet Inc.’s Google, an upcoming iteration of its Gemini software is not living up to internal expectations, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. Anthropic, meanwhile, has seen the timetable slip for the release of its long-awaited Claude model called 3.5 Opus.

These companies have found plenty of their own success in AI. And that’s unlikely to stop any time soon.

But that said, a slowdown of growth while a giant like Apple is hitting its stride—that’s not a good look.

Perhaps it won’t be long until the narrative of Apple being behind in AI can itself be put in the past.

What do you think about Apple’s AI position? Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments.