Apple Intelligence Is Coming But Are Apple’s AI Glory Days Still Years Away?

Apple is hyping the heck out if its upcoming Apple Intelligence features that are headed to compatible devices, including the recently-launched iPhone 16 lineup (see our iPhone 16 Pro review) and the previous generation iPhone 15 series, both of which have the requisite hardware to power Apple's "AI" features. While that's all well and good, at least one prominent analyst believes Apple Intelligence will fail to blow users away at first, and suggests that "Apple's AI glory is still years away."

For anyone unaware, Apple Intelligence is Apple's attempt to put its stamp and own branding on the artificial intelligence (AI) gold rush. Practically every major technology company is hyping AI in some form or another, some more than others. For Microsoft, it's the era of Copilot+ PCs, while chip players like AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm are heavily promoting neural processing units (NPUs) on their latest silicon. And of course NVIDIA is leading the charge on the hardware side, raking money in hand over first on booming AI chip demand.

In his latest PowerOn newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman points out that Apple Intelligence will finally debut around five days after the recently-announced iPad mini refresh with A17 Pro hardware inside lands at retail on October 23. This means consumers will have to install an update before they can access Apple's own AI features, though he says the bigger obstacle is that the initial features are "underwhelming."

"Mark my words, after 5 months of hype from Apple and others about Apple Intelligence, when it actually comes out next week, there is going to be a lot of 'that’s it'? or 'where is it'? from consumers," Gurman posted on X/Twitter.

Apple device owners with compatible devices can expect things like notification summaries, but more interesting capabilities are at least months if not years out. In the meantime, companies like Google, Meta, and OpenAI have already hit the ground running. More importantly, Gurman claims that internal studies at Apple suggest that OpenAI's ChatGPT is 25% more accurate than Siri, and capable of answering nearly a third—30%—more questions.

"In fact, some at Apple believe that its generative AI technology — at least, so far — is more than two years behind the industry leaders," Gurman says.

Be that as it may, he also notes that it's not wise to count Apple out of the AI arms race. While it's starting from behind, he points to a history of Apple being successful at playing catch-up, using Apple Maps as an example. He reckons Apple will either develop or acquire its way into being a top AI firm when all is said and done.

You can check out his latest newsletter to see what else had had to say.