Apple executives are still denying the importance of AI’s most used features

Apple has fallen behind in the AI race, but apparently its executives are still downplaying the importance of catching up. Industry insider Mark Gurman — in his newsletter Power On — says that the company’s upper echelons are still skeptical about AI-powered chatbots that can carry out multiple tasks.ChatGPT is a prime example of such a chatbot. Sure, you can converse with it at length, but you can also get it to handle your documents, write code for you, or even generate a unique digital image. Hundreds of millions of people now rely on ChatGPT on a daily basis, which has led to OpenAI becoming one of the world’s most prominent companies in a very short time.

It’s no secret that Apple’s digital assistant, Siri, remains woefully incompetent compared to its rivals, like Google’s Gemini. Apple is already using ChatGPT across its devices to handle most tasks that Siri is ill-equipped for. So, I am a bit baffled that some people at the company are still downplaying the importance of such a tool.

According to Gurman, Apple executives claim that consumer interest in such a chatbot is limited, something that I think is easily disprovable just by looking at OpenAI’s success. Furthermore, they apparently do not think that Apple’s lack of an alternative to ChatGPT and Gemini is a sign of the company falling behind in the AI race.

I, personally, disagree heavily. AI is here to stay, and it’s only going to seep further into every aspect of our lives. As Gurman also points out, many people have become heavily dependent on AI models like GPT-4, and many more are using AI chatbots in lieu of traditional search engines.

Samsung — arguably Apple’s largest rival in the smartphone market Stateside — has also incorporated Google’s Gemini into its phones. This has led to both the Galaxy S25 and Pixel 9 phones providing a much richer AI experience than the iPhone 16. Apple is also spending tons of money to come up with a homegrown alternative, so the executives’ remarks seem very odd to me.

A while back, we came to find out why Apple lost the AI race, and a lot of it had to do with how executives at the company had approached Artificial Intelligence when it was first blowing up. The company really needs to move past that mindset, because its traditional playbook will not help it when it comes to AI.

And, seeing how many future products will rely on it, Apple is only sabotaging its own success for the future of computing.