In Defence of Apple Intelligence

(Image by Author)

Whether we as consumers like it or not, Artificial Intelligence is the feature for much of the tech sector. The launch of ChatGPT created a tidal wave of attention and investment that caught everyone off-guard with Microsoft and Google scrambling to sign licence agreements or launch their own rival solutions.

Worried it’s cautious business model was making it look outdated, Apple seemingly followed with its own AI offering, Apple Intelligence. Starting with rewriting tools and then moving on to photo editing and image generation, it has had a rather muted reception from fans. Users are quick to compare it to Google’s more mature Gemini offering and find it wanting. After one too many dodgy photo edits, many users have just turned it off entirely and deleted the model to save space and processing.

Only a fool would tell you that Apple Intelligence is superior to its rivals. Running straight from a server farm rather than on-device, ChatGPT and Gemini are both capable of infinitely more complex commands than Apple’s offering could ever offer, from deep research to complex coding. Because their privacy-focused business model is at odds with the data mining of Google and OpenAI, Apple lack the ability to train a complex product that can cater to every whim. The mistake that has been made is assuming that Apple were out to build such a product at all though. Apple…