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We\u2019ve seen two approaches to AI in mobile tech this year: \u201cAI That\u2019s Not Your Phone\u201d and \u201cAI That Does Random Stuff on Your Phone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The \u201cNot Your Phone\u201d group includes devices like the Rabbit R1 and the Humane AI Pin, two small gadgets that sought to make AI more useful by building it into a smaller, simpler gadget. It hasn\u2019t gone very well. Both devices came with big promises to help us get things done without looking at our phone screens. Neither<\/a> delivered<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Now it\u2019s time for Apple, like Google and Microsoft before it, to announce a whole bunch of AI features at its annual developer conference today. But the current state of AI on our phones is, well, unimpressive. \u201cAI Doing Random Stuff on Your Phone\u201d includes Google\u2019s generative AI tools like Magic Editor, Samsung Galaxy AI, and that kind of thing. Right now, it\u2019s a bunch of party tricks that vary in quality from \u201ckinda helpful<\/a>\u201d to \u201cdoesn\u2019t really work<\/a>\u201d to \u201coh, dear GOD, no<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s definitely not the bold new future of mobile computing<\/a> we\u2019ve been promised.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s Apple\u2019s turn to make the case for AI as our daily assistant<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The company that has come the closest to showing us an AI feature that might actually save us some time is Microsoft. At its developer conference last month, the company announced Recall<\/a> for its new Copilot Plus PCs \u2014 a feature that takes screenshots every few seconds of whatever you\u2019re doing on your computer so you can use AI to search for it later. I could use that, like, yesterday. But maybe it\u2019s a good thing Recall isn\u2019t more widely available yet; it sounds like there are some serious security concerns<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n During its keynote today, it\u2019ll be Apple\u2019s turn to make the case for AI as our daily assistant \u2014 and the signals so far are encouraging. Some of the rumors sound like stuff we\u2019ve heard before, like AI voice memo transcriptions and summaries, but the most recent reports<\/a> point to features with \u201cbroad appeal.\u201d Siri would be a sensible home for stuff like that, and all signs point to a big update for iOS\u2019s virtual assistant. Most compelling of all, Siri might be able to do things on your phone<\/em><\/a> for you.<\/em> You know, the stuff virtual assistants have promised to do for the past decade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Apple has a real balancing act to pull off to make this a reality, though. The company reportedly doesn\u2019t have a blockbuster LLM of its own ready to announce, so it\u2019ll probably call in a ringer<\/a>: OpenAI. But public trust in that company isn\u2019t exactly at an all-time high<\/a>, and Apple will have to square its emphasis on privacy with the need to hand off data to the cloud. It might have some clever privacy solutions<\/a> on hand, but it seems likely that the AI era might push Apple to rely more on third parties than it has historically preferred to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As always, Apple comes to the table with a big advantage: control over both the software and hardware. In theory, that\u2019s something that Google has with its Pixel phones, but there\u2019s only so much it\u2019s been able to do with Android since it needs to work for everyone else in the ecosystem, too. Google\u2019s recent reorg<\/a> suggests that it sees the advantage in hardware and software teams working closer together, but for better or worse, Apple has a big head start here. Even if new and improved Siri can only access Apple apps for you<\/a> at first, that\u2019s still a whole lot of apps that plenty of people use on a daily basis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n