Apple Effectively Ignored AI at Today’s IPhone Launch
Today’s Apple “Awe Dropping” iPhone event was all about hardware, with new AirPods Pro and Apple Watch models unveiled, as well as the entire iPhone 17 lineup. But despite a few token mentions of chips, the event barely touched on artificial intelligence.
This is a major change of pace after last year’s iPhone 16 unveiling, which focused on the launch of Apple Intelligence . Does this mean Apple is still lagging behind in AI, or is Apple actually getting ahead of the curve by downplaying the latest trend in the tech industry?
Just a little bit of artificial intelligence
With one exception, Apple didn’t announce any new Apple Intelligence features at today’s event. Given that the company continues to lag behind in bringing general AI to Siri — a promise it’s been promising for a generation of phones but has yet to deliver — that’s perhaps not all that surprising.
Instead, AI was largely left on the periphery of today’s event. There was talk of using Siri to search for information about Apple products (a feature already available), as well as Workout Buddy, an AI-powered health assistant that has already been announced and is set to launch with watchOS 26. Otherwise, AI was used to advertise the new A19 and A19 Pro chips, which do indeed feature improved neural systems, presumably for use with the finalized version of Apple Intelligence.
As for when we’ll actually see something like this, it’s unclear. The biggest hint of AI at today’s conference came early on, when Apple said that the AirPods Pro 3 would be able to use live translation features for multilingual conversations. But even that feature appears to be built on top of Apple’s existing AI translator , though the AirPods Pro 3 version does have a unique gesture to activate translation and seems to work a little smoother.
However, there is no word yet on the daily integration of Apple Intelligence, which is still expected, including a voice assistant with more contextual recognition. Yes, the company’s new hardware seems powerful enough for AI, but when it comes to software, one would think Apple has fallen behind.
Has Apple Ditched Apple Intelligence?
While the iPhone 16 launch brought a lot of attention to AI, most of Apple’s AI features so far have been fairly modest, allowing its models to be used to generate new emoji or, awkwardly, forward questions to ChatGPT . It’s unlikely that AI can be integrated into everyday tasks the way Google did with Gemini on Android . And the features that do exist haven’t always been well received — the company even had to ditch AI notification summaries for news apps after they consistently garbled headlines.
Today’s event was an opportunity for Apple users to reassure themselves about the company’s AI prowess, especially as competitors are already rolling out seemingly impressive features like real-time phone call translation with voice cloning capabilities . The lack of mention of AI makes it seem like Apple would rather we all forget about the iPhone 16’s claimed capabilities, even as it tries to convince us of the need for a successor.
Is the company still working on real-world uses for these impressive new neural engines, or is it just quietly hoping to put this whole Apple Intelligence thing behind it?
What’s going on behind the scenes?
Apple Intelligence is still supposedly in active development, but the timing of any software release is unclear, which likely goes a long way toward explaining its absence from today’s event. According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman this summer , the company was late in investing in AI, not believing it would be ready for market before ChatGPT launched in 2022. The company has since been trying to catch up, but things don’t seem to be going well.
In fact, while Siri seems like the most logical way to access Apple’s AI, it already handles a number of more basic tasks, like reminders and alarms. Siri’s AI works pretty well on its own, Gurman says, but the company has trouble integrating it with the more familiar classic Siri. And (rightly, in our reporter’s opinion), the company is in no rush to release an AI version if it means breaking existing features.
However, that didn’t stop the company’s marketing department from continuing the campaign last year, which put the company in an awkward position. Gurman claims that the Siri AI update has now been delayed “indefinitely.”
Does this mean Apple has truly abandoned Apple Intelligence (or at least all but the most minor features)? Well, the company continues to build AI hardware into its phones, so it’s certainly future-proofing. But the truth is, it’s probably a lot less sure about what’s coming than it used to be.
The Limits of AI
If you can’t beat them, destroy them: Shortly after Gurman’s paper was published in June this year, Apple researchers published a study criticizing their AI competitors . The paper argued that advanced “big reasoning models” from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which attempt to solve complex problems by breaking them down into more manageable steps, suffer from “complete collapses in accuracy” when faced with sufficiently complex tasks.
At first glance, this sounds clear: we can’t expect perfection from AI yet. But this idea places limits on what AI can do. The paper argues that less powerful, more traditional large language models are better at low-complexity tasks, which raises the question: if the most advanced AI models currently fail at complex tasks and perform worse at simple ones, then what’s the point of them?
In other words, it’s possible that the tech industry as a whole doesn’t know where to take AI right now, since its current best efforts don’t seem capable of reliably doing what they were designed to do.
Apple’s study follows a similar study that also questioned less advanced models, arguing that they simply rely on “complex pattern matching.” So while they may be better than reasoning models at simple tasks, the limits of their application remain unclear.
Given this, it would make sense for Apple to give up on Apple Intelligence for now. While other companies are certainly ahead of Apple in the AI race as it currently stands, if the iPhone maker is right, companies like Google and Samsung could soon face diminishing returns. This is hardly the first time someone has warned of a possible AI bubble crash .
Which brings us to perhaps the main reason Apple avoided mentioning AI during its presentation: it didn’t need it.
Do people even want to use AI in their devices?
Apple’s iPhone 17 presentation was a stark contrast to Google’s “Made by Google” presentation in late August. While Apple detailed the hardware specs in its keynote, Google was silent on those details. And while Apple largely ignored artificial intelligence, Google made it a top priority.
There’s no doubt about it: The Pixel 10 line’s AI is definitely more advanced than the iPhone 17’s. It can use AI to retouch photos zoomed in over 100x, and it has that voice translation I mentioned earlier. But there are caveats to consider.
To be honest, when I finally got my hands on the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro , the AI, while more sophisticated than Apple Intelligence, still felt like a novelty. The 100x zoom distorts photos and creates scenes from an alternate universe, and voice translation during phone calls requires the person you’re talking to to have the same phone model as you, which severely limits its usefulness. Ultimately, I started to care more about the usual, everyday things about phones: battery life, how thick the device is, how hot it gets under load, and the quality of the cameras.
I bet I’m not alone. And so it was really nice to see Apple focusing more on the core features of its devices, rather than flashy AI features that I’ll likely only use a couple of times. Yes, there’s more competition at Apple than in AI right now, but based on the company’s research, it seems Cupertino is betting that AI may have run its course, both in terms of what even the best tech can do and in terms of how interesting it is to people.
The Future of Apple Intelligence
So, is Apple Intelligence being canceled? It probably depends on how consumers react to the iPhone 17 compared to its more AI-focused competitors. If Apple can continue to sell its phones as well as it does without investing millions into developing AI features where it’s already lagging, then yes, I can see it quietly shutting down most of its AI programs, hoping we’ll all forget about what it said the iPhone 16 could do. This wouldn’t be the first time a company has announced a product and then abandoned it shortly after .
But the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Right now, Apple is really relying on ChatGPT integration to make up for Siri’s lack of AI. By continuing to build its phones with powerful neural systems, Apple is allowing them to work with third-party tools as they evolve. Your iPhone will likely retain AI functionality in the future, but I wouldn’t bet on it getting significant support for Apple’s new AI anytime soon. Apple Intelligence will likely continue to evolve, but don’t be surprised if it becomes much more modest and integrated with other companies’ technologies in the future.