‘Apple Intelligence’

Daniel Jalkut, writing on his Bitsplitting blog one year ago:

Which leads me to my somewhat far-fetched prediction for WWDC: Apple will talk about AI, but they won’t once utter the letters “AI”. They will allude to a major new initiative, under way for years within the company. The benefits of this project will make it obvious that it is meant to serve as an answer comparable efforts being made by OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. During the crescendo to announcing its name, the letters “A” and “I” will be on all of our lips, and then they’ll drop the proverbial mic: “We’re calling it Apple Intelligence.” Get it?

Apple often follows the herd in terms of what they focus their efforts on, but rarely fall into line using the same tired jargon as the rest of the industry. Apple Intelligence will allow Apple to make it crystal clear to the entire world that they’re taking “AI” seriously, without stooping to the level of treating it as a commodity technology. They do this kind of thing all the time with names like Airport, Airplay, and Airtags. These marketing terms represent underlying technologies that Apple embraces and extends. Giving them unique names makes them easier to sell, but also gives Apple freedom to blur the lines on exactly what the technology should or shouldn’t be capable of.

Was a decent prediction a year ago, but looking even better now. Mark Gurman, today:

The company’s new AI system will be called Apple Intelligence, and it will come to new versions of the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems, according to people familiar with the plans. There also will be a partnership with OpenAI that powers a ChatGPT-like chatbot. And the tech giant is preparing to show new software for the Vision Pro headset, Apple Watch and TV platforms.

While we are guessing names, my prediction is they call the new Siri “Siri AI”. I don’t think they’ll abandon the Siri brand, but I think they need a name to say “This is an all-new Siri that is way better and more useful and definitely not so frustratingly dumb.” And what Apple likes to do with names is append adjectives. MacBook Pro. M3 Max. AirPort Extreme (RIP). “Siri” = old Siri; “Siri AI” = new Siri, and when you’re talking to it, you still just address it as “Siri”. That’s my guess. Otherwise I think they just stick with no-adjective “Siri” and swear up and down that it’s actually going to be good this year.