Apple’s Quiet AI Revolution
While other tech giants raced to unveil their AI strategies, Apple quietly built its own intelligence engine, preparing for a moment it always knew was coming.
A History of Intelligence Under the Radar
Apple may seem like a late arrival to the generative AI party, but the company’s executives insist otherwise. This summer, when Apple finally announced its foray into the world of generative AI, many saw the move as overdue. Conventional wisdom suggested that Apple had missed the boat, falling behind competitors like Google, Meta, and Microsoft.
But Apple executives have a different perspective. They argue that the company has been subtly weaving intelligence into its products for years, quietly refining its approach and preparing for this exact moment. “We were doing intelligence in 2015,” Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, revealed in a recent interview. “Predicting which apps you would use next and helping predict routes in maps—we didn’t always talk about it publicly, but we were there and ahead of the curve.”
A Strategic Acquisition and the Rise of Apple Intelligence
In 2018, Apple made a significant move, poaching John Giannandrea from Google to lead its machine learning and AI strategy. The position itself was irregular for Apple, breaking from its traditional hiring norms. This signaled a deliberate and strategic shift towards embracing AI as a core competency.
Giannandrea, upon arriving at Apple, was struck by how deeply ingrained AI already was in some of the company’s most popular features. “Face ID is a feature you use every day, many, many times a day to unlock your phone, and you have no idea how it really works,” he remarked. “There’s a lot of deep learning going on privately on your phone just to make that feature work. But to the user, it just disappears.”
For Apple, the goal has always been seamless integration. AI shouldn’t be a standalone feature; it should be an invisible force enhancing the user experience.
From GPT-3 to a Vision for the Future
Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president for software engineering, shared how experimenting with OpenAI’s GPT-3 model in 2020 sparked a wave of imagination within the company.
“Things that seemed on their way to becoming possible suddenly appeared eminently possible,” he said. “The next real question was whether it was possible to take advantage of the technology in an Apple way.”
And that’s precisely what they set out to do, quietly building teams dedicated to developing transformer-based AI models. By the time ChatGPT took the world by storm in November 2022, Apple was well-positioned. There was no need to scramble – the groundwork was already laid for features that would seamlessly disappear into the fabric of user experience.
“We have ways of drawing together functional expertise across the organization to accomplish larger product transformations,” Federighi explained. “When it came to making a bigger step in a public way, we pulled together many of those threads, in a way that’s just very familiar to us at Apple.”
The result is Apple Intelligence, the culmination of years of behind-the-scenes work. Apple’s approach emphasizes a fundamental commitment to user privacy and a belief that AI should empower, not overwhelm.
How has Apple’s “quiet AI revolution” manifested in their existing products and services?
## Apple’s Quiet AI Revolution: An Interview with Alex Reed
**Interviewer:** Welcome to the show, Alex Reed. Apple recently unveiled its foray into generative AI, sparking debate about whether they’re late to the party. Some say they missed the boat, while others claim they’ve been quietly building their AI muscles for years. What’s your take?
**Alex Reed:** I think Apple’s approach has been fascinating. They’ve been embedding intelligence into their products for a long time, even if they didn’t always shout about it. As Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, said, they were already predicting app usage and map routes back in 2015. [[1](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/get-started-with-apple-intelligence-mchl46361784/mac)]
**Interviewer:** So, they were laying the groundwork, even before the term “generative AI” became mainstream.
**Alex Reed:** Exactly. And then in 2018, they made a crucial move by hiring John Giannandrea from Google to lead their machine learning and AI strategy. Giannandrea himself was impressed by how deeply ingrained AI already was in Apple’s products. This signaled a significant shift for Apple, embracing AI as a core competency.
**Interviewer:** That’s interesting. What do you think this “quiet” approach means for Apple’s future in AI?
**Alex Reed:** I believe it positions them well. They’ve had time to learn, iterate, and build trust with users. People already rely on Apple for privacy and security, and I think that’s crucial for AI adoption. They’re not rushing to release flashy features; they’re focused on integrating AI seamlessly into the user experience.
**Interviewer:** So, a slow and steady approach, rather than a chaotic race to the finish line.
**Alex Reed:** Absolutely. And considering Apple’s history of innovation, I’m excited to see what they come up with next. Their “quiet AI revolution” may be just getting started.
