One of the surprises of the App Store Awards 2023 is the election of a “trend of the year”, for the first time in the history of the ceremony organized by Apple. The brand will highlight “generative artificial intelligence” on the App Store home page, even though it is late on this subject.
Every year, Apple reveals the list of its favorite applications. The brand generally elects one winner per platform, a few games and some additional software that it wants to highlight. In 2023, the hiking application AllTrails is the big winner on iPhone.
Without wishing to disrespect the developers of these applications, another element caught our attention when the winners of the App Store Awards were revealed. For the first time, Apple has named a “trend of the year”. And the winner of 2023 is as predictable as it is unexpected.
Apple admits that generative AI has torn everything in 2023
Generative artificial intelligence, the big trend of 2023? It’s hard to be surprised. The birth of ChatGPT swept away everything in its path and could be the starting point of a true technological revolution. Everything indicates that generative AI is set to be talked about for a long time, where all the previous major trends ended up running out of steam (hello to the metaverse). In short, by designating the trendy generative AI of 2023, Apple is not getting too wet. And, paradoxically, it highlights one of its greatest weaknesses.
Indeed, even if AI is everywhere in Apple products, the Californian brand is not associated with the current technological revolution.
Siri, its standard bearer in terms of AI, is objectively lagging behind ChatGPT, Google Bard or Microsoft Copilot. Apple’s text and object recognition technologies are powerful, but remain light years behind the generation tools of Adobe, Google, OpenAI and Midjourney. Moreover, most of Apple’s sophisticated speech recognition technologies only work in English, whereas others’ tools learn languages automatically, allowing them to work in all countries. In short, everything remains to be done at Apple in terms of generative artificial intelligence.
A question then arises: why elect generative artificial intelligence “trend of the year”, when Apple is renowned for only talking about things it masters to perfection? The ChatGPT logo will be displayed on the App Store home page, not the Siri logo. We can recognize in Apple a form of honesty and objectivity, but it does it a disservice.
In its press release, Apple justifies its choice with the following statement: “Applications are a reflection of culture, and in 2023, generative AI has captured the collective imagination of users with its evolution unfolding in real time. Applications have started incorporating AI throughout the year in various ways. Although many features are still in their early stages, they have given users the chance to see, first-hand, the technology in action and draw their own conclusions about the benefits and risks..
One element catches our attention: “ Although many features are still in their early stages », which can be interpreted as a means of justifying one’s own delay. Rumor has it that Apple is preparing a heavily AI-powered iOS 18, potentially with an all-new Siri based on a language model internally dubbed “AppleGPT.” Its latest A17 Pro and M3 chips also focus on the neural part, with great local processing capabilities. For his part, Tim Cook has already said that he was impressed by generative AI, without revealing details about his company’s plans… Everything suggests that after making AI the trend of 2023, Apple will now make it its priority for 2024.
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