The AI Battle: Is Apple Ready?
Satya Nadella of Microsoft has blown the bugle, will Tim Cook respond later this year?
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was in India recently and during a keynote asked local enterprises to adopt AI to boost productivity and more. And in what seemed to be a pot shot at arch rival Apple, he said the company was still waiting for the competition to arrive and challenge GPT4, the OpenAI model that now powers several of Microsoft’s products and services.
Of course, Nadella too sure that it is only a matter of time before competition would emerge but we perceive his latest comment as a reiteration of the oft-repeated industry chorus about how Microsoft has left Apple stuck on the starting blocks when it comes to GenAI models built around processing large language models (LLMs).
“We have the best model today … even with all the hoopla, one year after, GPT4 is better,” Nadella said at a company event in Mumbai while also noting that they were waiting for the competition to arrive. It will arrive, I’m sure, but the fact [is] that we have the … leading LLM out there.” He went on to urge India to ramp up efforts saying, “this new capability, AI, is going to have an impact on GDP.”
What’s Apple up to on the GenAI front?
In a parallel universe, Apple’s Tim Cook kept offering subtle hints over his company’s efforts in this direction. During an earnings call earlier this month, the official said a “Made in Cupertino” Gen AI story could emerge as early as “later this year”. The Apple CEO told investors to expect “groundbreaking innovation of the kind seen in their Vision Pro headset.
Of course, there was little else forthcoming from Tim Cook, though his subtle hints makes us believe that something could be cooking up during the company’s annual developer conference WWDC scheduled for June. Can we expect a reveal then? With Apple, it’s tough to get a handle on what’s cooking and how Tim Cook lays it out.
Cook did make a soft jab at competition during the earnings call by suggesting that Apple has always believed in doing the work and then talking about the work and not to get in front of ourselves. “And so we’re going to hold onto this as well. But we’ve got some things that we’re incredibly excited about, that we’ll be talking about later this year,” he said.
Given that the iPhone maker has been talking about edge processing and AI, questions were also raised around this topic, though Cook remained largely silent but did proffer something in the nature of a crumb. “Let me just say that I think there’s a huge opportunity for Apple with Gen AI and AI — without getting into more details and getting out in front of myself.”
Could privacy be a differentiator for Apple?
While Nadella may have taken the pole position with AI, Apple seems to be seeking the moral high ground. In recent times OpenAI has been hauled up for allegedly violating European Union privacy laws post a several month-long investigation into AI chatbot and ChatGPT by Italian data protection authorities.
Though details of the findings weren’t made public, reports appearing late January said OpenAI had been notified and given 30 days to respond. Confirmed breaches of the pan-EU regime can attract fines of up to €20 million, or up to 4% of global annual turnover. Of course, OpenAI came out with a typical statement claiming they “believe” their practices align with GDPR and privacy laws and that they would take additional steps to protect data and privacy.
Now, Apple has been steadfast in its positioning as a pro-privacy and pro-user company that poses a challenge and an opportunity when it comes to GenAI and the need for massive data to train AI models. But, if Cook and team can offer GenAI tools without demanding user data on a third party cloud instance, and instead process it locally on a device, they could put it across companies who are now claiming pole position.
Of course, with edge AI, performance would be the key and Apple is known to take its own time to bring the right amount of finesse to its products using its own hardware and software combos in the past. As for rationale, Cook has the right quantum to go after this space and when it comes to funds, Apple has enough and more cash lying around.
Looks like the battle bugle for GenAI has truly been blown with Apple once again doing what it does best. Wait for mistakes from early adopters and creators, add its finesse and then launch something that is irresistible even if it’s priced almost out of one’s pocket.
