Apple seemingly knows Apple Intelligence is not as good as ChatGPT

Apple’s AI efforts are significantly behind Google, Meta, and OpenAI. Reportedly, some inside the company believe it is “more than two years behind the industry leaders.”

Apple previewed Apple Intelligence at WWDC 24. However, the public will only get a taste of its AI efforts when iOS 18.1 drops later this month.

Apple’s AI efforts are at least two years behind the competition

Apple is marketing all its AI features under the Apple Intelligence moniker. This includes Writing Tools, Photo Memories, a smarter Siri, and more. But none of the AI features are part of iOS 18‘s initial public release. This is despite Apple heavily pushing Apple Intelligence alongside the iPhone 16‘s unveiling.

Even when Apple Intelligence debuts with iOS 18.1, it won’t launch with its most impressive features. They will arrive with iOS 18.2 and eventually with iOS 18.3 by early next year.

Apple’s AI efforts have been slow to take off, while OpenAI, Google, and Meta have been rapidly innovating in this field. Apple is supposedly internally aware that it lags behind its peers in the AI field.

Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, in his latest Power On newsletter edition, says, “Some at Apple believe that its generative AI technology — at least, so far — is more than two years behind the industry leaders.” Internal studies apparently revealed that ChatGPT is 25% more accurate and can answer 30% more queries than Siri.

Can Apple catch up to the competition?

Apple is typically not at the forefront of adopting new technologies. It took time to bring 120Hz ProMotion displays to iPhones. Likewise, the iPhone 14 Pro series introduced Always-On Display in 2022, long after the feature became commonplace even in mid-range Android phones.

But one should never count Apple out. The company can rapidly innovate when it needs to catch up, and its tight hardware and software integration, coupled with a wide user base, gives it an advantage like no other.

More importantly, there are still no clear use cases for AI, and consumers are not flocking to it. So, there’s a long road ahead for all companies involved in the AI field. And their early lead might not matter much in the next few years.