Apple CEO Tim Cook during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, on June 5, 2023.
Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
Apple was under pressure to excite users with its artificial intelligence announcements on Monday in part because it fell behind competitors in terms of articulating an AI strategy. Rivals have already rolled out impressive AI software tools, as well as AI-powered devices.
Here’s a look at some of Apple’s competition in the AI space:
Samsung: Earlier this year, Samsung rolled out its line of Galaxy S24 smartphones that include on-device generative AI capabilities. The phones can translate voice conversations and messages in real-time; users can ask questions about what they see on their screen; and AI editing capabilities make it easy to tweak photos.
Microsoft: In May, Microsoft introduced a line of computers that include advanced AI tools, as well as its AI assistant Copilot. Copilot can help with tasks such as writing, keeping track of emails in Outlook or designing presentations in PowerPoint. The company also announced a controversial AI-powered feature called Recall that lets users quickly find things on their computer, such as documents, images and websites they’d viewed in the past.
Google: Google recently demonstrated how its AI technology, known as Gemini, will soon work across Gmail, Google Photos, Search and more. One new feature, called Ask Photos, allows users to search photos for deeper insights, such as what your license plate number is, by looking through their saved pictures. Another feature could enable the AI to “read” a textbook and turn it into a “lecture” featuring a natural-sounding teaching voice that could answer questions. The company has also begun rolling out AI summaries of search results at the top of Google Search for some queries.
OpenAI: OpenAI’s latest large language model, GPT-4o, is set to supercharge ChatGPT, effectively turning it into a digital personal assistant that can engage in real-time, spoken conversations. The new technology enables ChatGPT to do everything from providing real-time instructions for solving a math problem to telling (or even singing) a bedtime story. The model can also detect a user’s emotions based on their voice or facial expression, and can have a conversation across multiple different languages at once.
