If you read Bloomberg Businessweek’s deep dive into Apple’s blundering work with artificial intelligence, a consistent theme is the lack of any clear idea within the company as to what good AI on an Apple device should actually do. On Tuesday, with the company looking no closer to have come up with the answer internally, we learned it would soon open things up so others could have a go at figuring it out.
The iPhone maker is working on a software development kit and related frameworks that will let outsiders build AI features based on the large language models that the company uses for Apple Intelligence,” Bloomberg News’ Mark Gurman reported, citing people with knowledge of the company’s planned announcements at its coming and critically important Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9.
Then again, as I’ve said before, Apple has the luxury of time to get things right with AI. The iPhone is still the dominant smartphone, and its user lock-in has not yet shown any signs of being weakened by the appeal of AI features on competing devices.
But that time isn’t limitless, and opening up its foundational AI models for outsiders to build with is an indication of how desperately Apple wants to solve its problems sooner rather than later. Gurman writes:
The new approach would let developers integrate the underlying technology into specific features or across their full apps. To start, Apple will open up its smaller models that run on its devices, rather than the more powerful cloud-based AI models that require servers.
It gives developers the chance to come up with better applications for Apple’s AI than the company has been able to manage itself. Using Apple’s on-device AI models gives developers a chance to layer AI into their apps without needing to send information to the cloud or expect users to put up with lag times as the AI “thinks.”
In many ways, it is a repeat of the strategy that made the iPhone a breakthrough device in the first place. Apple introduced a software developers kit in time for the device’s second generation despite Steve Jobs not initially being sold on the idea. The iPhone’s place in history would have surely been vastly different had he not been brought around. According to Businessweek, there had been a similar reluctance to mount a full-throated effort to build AI, with senior Apple figures unconvinced as to its true utility – which, in fairness to them, is still an open question. Regardless, opening up the challenge to third-party developers increases the likelihood that the iPhone will get a killer AI application before its competitors.Now the question is how close Apple will let developers get to the real nuts and bolts of its AI and the user data that it harnesses. Historically, the company has been notoriously protective – some argue anticompetitive – around how much access to give third parties to its core functionality, preferring to keep some exclusively for its own products and services. It’s why Apple has allowed only tap-to-pay cards in a user’s Apple Wallet rather than a third-party bank app. It’s also why the Apple Watch works better with iPhone than smartwatches from other brands. Apple says this is all in the name of privacy and a superior user experience.
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