When Will Apple Get AI Right?

While Samsung, Google and a host of others are touting powerful features, Apple pretty much just showed us ads about Apple Intelligence, with features slowly trickling in. Unfortunately, mere promises aren’t enough, especially in a hyper-competitive market.

Worse, the news summary features resulted in more egg on Apple’s face with major inaccuracies creeping in when news was summarised.

Apple is facing a lawsuit in the US for allegedly engaging in false advertising when it comes to Apple Intelligence.

While I certainly welcome the launch of Apple Intelligence in India and the focus on user privacy, I do hope Apple will get its act right on AI—the company has set such high standards in most other things related to technology that users expect nothing less.

While Samsung, Google and a host of others are touting powerful features, Apple pretty much just showed us ads about Apple Intelligence, with features slowly trickling in. Unfortunately, mere promises aren’t enough, especially in a hyper-competitive market.

Worse, the news summary features resulted in more egg on Apple’s face with major inaccuracies creeping in when news was summarised.

Apple is facing a lawsuit in the US for allegedly engaging in false advertising when it comes to Apple Intelligence.

While I certainly welcome the launch of Apple Intelligence in India and the focus on user privacy, I do hope Apple will get its act right on AI—the company has set such high standards in most other things related to technology that users expect nothing less.

I’m particularly excited about an ‘AI doctor’ like feature that Apple may soon bring to its Health app. According to Bloomberg, the app will get an AI-powered health coach that can analyse health data like a real doctor. Essentially, Apple will use readings from multiple Apple devices and wearables and AI will use this data to give personalised health tips and recommendations.

Given this is about health, Apple will definitely be working closely with the best medical professionals. Knowing how good Apple’s wearables like the Apple Watch are for tracking health parameters, I believe Apple has a huge chance here to repair the reputational damage caused by past AI self-goals. 

Not that the competition will be resting on their laurels. Buoyed by DeepSeek and other AI models—expect a new one from Alibaba very soon—China is among the hottest AI markets in the world and Apple Intelligence is only expected to come to China around the middle of this year. Very late to that party indeed. It’s no surprise Apple iPhone sales fell more than 18% in the December quarter.

As a result, Apple is doing things differently in China by working with local partners, which is also thanks to regulatory pressure there. This means Apple cannot maintain the level of control it is famously used to. But as one of our stories explains this week, that could be a blessing in disguise as Apple scrambles to stay on top in China. Perhaps other markets may also benefit

We also have a fascinating piece on the trend of companies leveraging AI for hiring; with some going the whole hog, and how this may be causing more damage than good, and resulting in some great candidates being overlooked. Ironically, some AI companies are using humans to screen their applicants because they have realised the pitfalls.

And smart candidates are depending less on AI because they realise their unique perspectives make them stand out. All of which once again proves that AI isn’t a silver bullet.

But one area where AI is delivering stunning results is the property insurance sector. This week we have a story on how insurers in the West are using AI-driven tools to better manage risk from climate-driven weather catastrophes.

This includes tools that crunch massive volumes of data from aerial and satellite imagery to check everything from materials used to factors like nearby vegetation, maintenance and more to help create better reports that empower insurers to understand the risk and set the right premiums, all of which make for stable business operations. I look forward to speaking to Indian insurance CIOs to find out what they are doing on this front—our insurance sector is world-class when it comes to using tech, and I hope to report on this soon.

Here are some of the other AI-related headlines from the week gone by, just in case you missed any:

Gen AI Spending To Reach $644 Billion In 2025: Gartner

Alibaba Preparing For Flagship AI Model Release As Soon As April

Government Cyber Advisory Warns About Data Theft By AI Apps, Says Not All Safe

Johnson & Johnson's Ajay Anand Named Wharton AI's Executive In Residence

Accenture To Drive Malabar Gold & Diamonds’ Operations Using AI, Cloud Tech

OpenAI Rolls Out GPT-4o-Powered Image Generation For Free Users On ChatGPT

OpenAI Expands COO’s Role as Altman Focuses on Research and Products

visionOS 2.4 Brings Apple Intelligence, New Spatial Gallery To Vision Pro; Check Features And Updates

ChatGPT-4o Gets New Updates: Lesser Emojis, More Intuitive Model

OpenAI CEO Wants Break From Studio Ghibli-Style Image Trend — 'Our Team Needs Sleep'

Till next week, 

-Ivor Soans