Narrative: Apple is Behind in AI

Written: December 26, 2016

One of the more recent Apple-related narratives to have emerged is that the company is behind in developing artificial intelligence relative to peers and competitors like Google and Microsoft, and that this will make it less competitive in future (fatally so, in the extreme version of the narrative).

The basis for the claim has multiple elements. Firstly, Apple has been far less vocal (at least until recently) about its AI and machine learning chops – the terms were barely mentioned by Apple before 2016. Secondly, Apple doesn’t appear to be investing in AI in the same way – there has been relatively little evidence of AI in Apple’s products and services. Thirdly, Apple’s penchant for secrecy about what it’s working on has led it to bar employees from writing publicly about their AI work, something most AI researchers are accustomed to doing before they join Apple, which hampers hiring and retention of top talent. Lastly, there’s a sense that Apple’s AI efforts may be hamstrung by its insistence on not sending personally identifiable data to the cloud, which prevents it from using some AI techniques on an individual user basis off the device with powerful computing infrastructure.

All these claims have some basis in fact, but the reality isn’t quite what the narrative suggests, especially in recent months. It’s true that Apple didn’t talk much about AI or ML for a very long time, but this has begun to change. Its 2016 events, and especially WWDC, featured numerous mentions of both AI and ML. That’s a big shift, because Apple has rightly chosen in the past to show rather than tell when it comes to AI – in other words, to sell the features that make use of AI, rather than the AI itself, since the former matters to users and the latter doesn’t. But the discussion about AI in the tech press recently hasn’t been so much about the user experience but about perceived expertise, something Apple doesn’t usually talk about as readily. However, Apple also opened the kimono a little around AI with reporters this past year, further evidence that it recognizes a need to get out of its comfort zone a little here. To address the second point, which is really related to the first, Apple has been investing in AI all along but hasn’t used the label. Siri, typing suggestions, face recognition and plenty more have made use of AI and ML, and Apple continued to advance its use of AI in 2016 with its WWDC announcements.

On the third point, Apple has now begun to allow its researchers to publish, with both the announcement of that policy change and the first paper coming at the end of 2016. 2016 really was the year in which Apple began to take the public face of its AI research seriously. It also addressed the fourth and final point in 2016, with a discussion of differential privacy at WWDC in the summer, suggesting that it was possible to leverage user-level data without compromising user identity.

Apple still needs to demonstrate that it can compete on AI in future – Amazon’s Echo and Alexa technologies have been somewhat misleadingly described as AI in the media, and this hasn’t helped perceptions of Apple’s AI chops, with Siri considered by many to be inferior. But if Apple can keep adding value to its products and ecosystem with useful applications of AI, that will go a lot further where it really matters than inside baseball commentary about the AI wars.