Apple Intelligence was bitten by ambition

Apple Intelligence failed to launch because the tech giant put too much money where their mouth was. Long before its official launch, Apple Intelligence was touted as the next big thing — Apple’s game-changing foray into a new era. For a while, it did indeed seem that way — until it didn’t, or at least, not in the way many users and tech-junkies had hoped for.

Perfect is the enemy of good, but so is imperfect. Four years ahead of the AI curve, Apple successfully snatched Google’s John Giannandrea to lead its AI department, positioned to become an AI Powerhouse. But when OpenAI’s ChatGPT took off in 2022, triggering an avalanche of tech companies racing to catch up and overcrowding the AI industry, Apple had only begun formulating an actionable AI plan. Despite the headstart and a staggering USD 22.6 bn investment in AI R&D, Apple was conspicuously absent on the scene until the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) — arriving two years late to a party they threw, with little to show for it.

At WWDC, CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple Intelligence would “transform what users can do with our products — and what our products can do for our users,” promising revolutionary features — an AI-enhanced Siri, notification summaries, native writing tools, image creation tools, and much more.

…and then they launched without it. Just days before release, Apple announced that the iPhone 16 would ship without its promised AI technology, and that buyers would have to wait at least a month until those features become available. Unsurprisingly, first-weekend pre-sales of the iPhone 16 tanked y-o-y, with an estimated 37 mn units sold, 12% lower than 2023’s iPhone 15. The first batch of AI features arrived a month and a half after the lineup’s release. Genmojis followed in December, priority notifications in March 2025, and the “new and improved Siri” is still nowhere to be found.

Hell hath no fury like an Apple user scorned. Disappointment in the new iPhone lineup was palpable. Droves of Apple loyalists felt deceived, with many going as far as filing a class-action lawsuit on the basis of false advertising, according to Axios. “Contrary to Defendant's claims of advanced AI capabilities, the products offered a significantly limited or entirely absent version of Apple Intelligence, misleading consumers about its actual utility and performance,” the lawsuit reads.

Last month, Apple unveiled a new approach that could potentially turn their late arrival to the AI race into a strategic advantage: They plan to use their USD 500 bn R&D budget to establish a new benchmark for privacy to the notoriously invasive process of AI development… If they can successfully implement it at scale before consumer patience runs out. The company’s “ differential privacy ” system will mimic user communications based on samples gathered in-device without being shared with Apple. This allows the tech titan to give some much-needed training to its AI without sacrificing user privacy — a huge selling point for many users consistently growing more and more wary of data theft by other AI leaders.