How Apple fell behind in the AI arms race

livemint.com:

For those who saw them, the demonstrations inside Apple earlier this decade of a revamped Siri offered a showcase of the amazing capabilities a powerful AI voice assistant could have. The famed assistant, one of the last projects Apple co-founder Steve Jobs worked on before his death, had been given a total overhaul. Capable of running on an iPhone and without an internet connection, the new Siri impressed people with its improved speed, conversational capabilities and the accuracy with which it understood user commands.

Code-named Project Blackbird, the effort also imagined a Siri with capabilities built by third-party app developers, according to people familiar with the work. Yet a competing project won out in an internal contest ahead of the 10-year anniversary of Siri’s launch. Known as Siri X, the more-modest upgrade involved moving more existing Siri software onto iPhones from remote servers to improve the voice assistant’s speed and privacy.

The Siri X enhancement was unveiled in 2021. Next week, at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, the company is set to join an AI arms race that many think will define the future of technology. The iPhone maker is trying to catch up with Microsoft, Alphabet’s Google and other rivals that have begun to integrate generative AI into their core products.

Apple’s caution and characteristic secrecy, as well as the care it takes in upgrading devices—where hardware and software are seamlessly integrated—have hobbled its early efforts in the AI arena, the people said. It now finds itself in the unusual position of having to take risks. The company is set to announce an array of generative-AI upgrades to its software products, including Siri, said people familiar with its