Tim Cook Knows Apple Isn’t First in AI but Says ‘It’s About Being the Best’

Ricky Bobby from the 2006 film Talladega Nights would find Apple’s belated rollout of Apple Intelligence a sure sign of failure. “If you ain’t first, you’re last,” he’d say to Apple CEO Tim Cook. In the meantime, Cook is aware that his company isn’t going to have AI first, but the longer the CEO said it takes to—ahem—cook Apple Intelligence, the more savory a treat it will eventually be.

Compared to the competition on Android, the initial rollout expected Oct. 28 will be barebones. Google’s Gemini already has AI-generated text and summarization capabilities, and the AI image generation from Apple’s Image Playground and—most importantly—the Siri integration that can work between apps on users’ behalf don’t have an official launch date. Hints from Bloomberg’s Apple guru Mark Gurman mention we could see these features in a few months, though in all likelihood, a better Siri won’t arrive until 2025.

“We weren’t the first to do intelligence,” Cook told The Wall Street Journal in an interview Monday. “But we’ve done it in a way that we think is the best for the customer.”

We have yet to test out Apple Intelligence in all its true glory. ChatGPT and Gemini are already prolific, and we’ve seen a few of their ups alongside their many downs. However, as Apple integrates its AI, there are already troubling signs. Gurman wrote in his latest Power On newsletter that, internally, Apple believes its AI “is more than two years behind the industry leaders.” An internal study found that Siri was 25% less accurate than ChatGPT. According to the Bloomberg writer, OpenAI’s chatbot could answer 30% more questions.

Apple intends to integrate ChatGPT onto users’ iPhones (or at least all the iPhone 16s, the iPhone 15 Pro, and the latest iPads, including the 2024 Air, Pro, and upcoming iPad mini). It will be restricted behind Apple’s security apparatus, and users will need to grant permission before using any of its touted generative features.

Apple may not need to be first. Bringing up the rear has its advantages. You can see how other companies fail and then tailor your software for the better. Even then, the initial rollout will seem like deja vu. You can already access the initial first instance of Apple Intelligence through the iOS 18.1 beta. In a nutshell, AI features like Writing Tools let you highlight text to either proofread, rewrite, or summarize with an AI. Other initial Apple Intelligence features include a “priority notifications” capability to put your most pressing notifications, like important meetings or texts, closest to the top. The AI can also summarize the transcripts in Notes or from phone calls.

Just how useful are text summaries? Cook says he’s been using them recently for his emails, saving him time “here and there.” If it saves you a few minutes each day, then perhaps it might save you a few hours or days over a month. I might ask why I would write a long, detailed email if I know my boss isn’t going to read it. Still, for the Apple CEO, he claims, “It’s changed my life.”

As somebody who has used AI in various capacities over the past two years, I have a much different outlook. Text summaries can occasionally be helpful, but as a journalist, I find the important bits lie in the details. I can’t ask AI to skim product briefs for the next iPad I’m reviewing in case it misses something. I might ask an AI to find out the specs of an old iPhone for a feature I’m working on, but I still have to double-check its work because AI may get it wrong, and you’re never quite sure where it’s pulling the data from.

The less I need to say about AI-generated text, the better. Still, Apple’s CEO told WSJ that AI would make users’ time on the phone “profoundly different.” He believes it will change how users operate their phones.

Apple has had major misses. Remember the butterfly keyboards? It’s like any other major company that’s been around for the past 50 years. Sometimes, it messes up, but Apple’s unique in never acknowledging those failures. In the interview, Cook is presented as having a positive outlook. He said the company is not “running to get something out first… If you talk to 100 people, 100 of them would tell you: It’s about being the best.”

The interview doesn’t examine the CEO’s reasoning too critically. Cook is a salesman, first and foremost. Despite the CEO’s talk, Apple was late to AI. It only made its first AI models public in December 2023. One anonymous worker inside Apple told Gurman last year that it’s belated work on AI was viewed as “a pretty big miss internally.”

Then again, we may not need an Apple Intelligence as capable as ChatGPT. The ideal is to have an “agentic” AI that works on-device. It needs to be capable of taking information between apps, like setting a calendar reminder based on a text (something Gemini is already edging close to). The first company to reach that goal will have struck gold; AI summaries be damned.