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Where's Apple's AI mojo? From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Nova Soffo.
Today on Marketplace Tech Bytes, Week in Review, we're looking at Apple's latest software and operating system updates. Also, there's a tentative labor deal between video game actors and studios. And we'll remember legendary Apple software engineer Bill Atkinson, who died at the age of 74.
We begin with Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which came and went this week with some mixed reception, you could say. I spoke with Anita Ramaswamy, columnist for The Information, to get her take. The conference usually gets a lot of hype. It's a big deal. And I think this year people were disappointed to see that there weren't more features Apple was announcing or planning to roll out anytime soon that have to do with AI. There
There were a number of cool features that they announced, but a lot of them were things that competitors already have that you can already get on Samsung phones, on Android. So, you know, I think folks were just underwhelmed and they were kind of hoping for something more than just a design change. And a lot of people didn't like the design change because it's not the most user-friendly. Yeah. So a lot there to unpack. Let's start with the stuff that they did announce that
reminded a lot of folks of Android phones. Can you walk us through some of the stuff, the highlights that stood out to you? Yeah, so some of the features that they announced were, for example, live translation of messages, FaceTime calls, and phone calls. So you can see in real time as you're talking to someone what they're saying, which is cool, but you know. I feel like that's been around for like, what, a year now? Yeah. Yeah, it's existed for a little while. There was also the, I mean, this one was a little bit more significant and maybe a
related to AI, which is that they are going to allow third-party app developers to access AI models that run on the phones themselves. And why that's important is that basically an app like, for example, AllTrails, which people use for hiking, you could theoretically, if the company allowed it, be able to go into that app and ask
the AllTrails app questions about, for example, like, oh, I want to go on this hike with my two children and I want it to be X number of miles, that sort of thing. So it will, you know, theoretically enable apps to be a little more usable when it comes to the AI features. But all of that is a little bit far out. And a lot of the significant changes are things like
the live translation. There's another one, call screening, which allows you to filter out spam calls basically by having a system ask a person if it's an unknown caller what they're calling about. And it records a little voice bite. So you as the phone user don't necessarily need to answer the phone if you're not satisfied with that answer.
Nice enough, but yeah, not really huge features. And I'm just curious, with AI, what's holding Apple back? I mean, if we can say it's holding it back, I think that's generally the consensus at this point. Apple's a bit behind on AI. What's holding it back?
So last year, Apple announced this big overhaul to Siri and said that it was going to be significantly improved with all these AI features integrated. And so far, that has just not happened. They were planning to release it. And they even showed a bunch of ads on TV last year that showed features that don't exist. There's been a lot of tension internally in terms of which team is working on what and some fragmentation within the top ranks of executive leadership as to
what teams are focused on what aspects of AI. And then, you know, a lack of alignment on what the company's overall vision is. They seem to be really focused on
I'm sure plenty of resources were taken up by this liquid glass design update. But at the end of the day, that's just a design update and really doesn't have anything to do with AI. They also don't have a cloud computing arm, which kind of means that they have to make partnerships with other companies in order to do that. Whereas if you look at Google, if you look at Amazon, they have direct access to cloud computing servers, which kind of helps them build AI faster. And
And so there has been this distinction I've seen talked about quite a bit about on-device AI, which is what Apple is focused on, versus cloud-based AI. Explain that distinction and why that could be a hiccup for Apple.
So cloud-based AI is more powerful. If you can run AI models in a data center, they are put simply more capable. The on-device AI models are smaller. They're a little bit easier to run, but Apple has always been more focused on the hardware. So they started building all these AI models, but they're just not as impressive and not able to handle as many tasks as the AI models that are larger that are coming from some of the other competitors. Overall, is it fair to say Apple is...
A bit out of ideas. I mean, we're not seeing any major kind of headline grabbing innovations coming from that company. And we haven't in a while, really. Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of hype around Formula One and the marketing around that partnership in the video, which was really funny. But, you know, when it comes to actual features, Apple has really not delivered or even announced anything that would be groundbreaking. At this point, this year's WWDC felt like them just playing catch up to Samsung and Android.
you know, at the end of the day, like they have not announced a bold vision that would really drive consumers to want to upgrade their phones. And there are a lot of companies, you know, some of the chip makers, a lot of, you know, hardware partners that provide materials and parts for Apple that will also probably suffer. And a lot of analyst projections that, you know, Wall Street has right now for these different companies growth is actually fundamentally based on the idea that plenty of consumers are, of course, they're going to want to up
upgrade their iPhones, of course, they're going to want to upgrade their Apple devices. And unless Apple comes out with something really bold and compelling, that may not come to pass. You know, we also have the overlay of tariffs, the potential that iPhones are going to cost more money. And it's just becoming a tougher sell for Apple to really pitch to the individual customer that, hey, you need a new phone. We'll be right back.
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Hi, everyone. It's Neil Scarborough, Marketplace's general manager with an important message. The recent rescission package being weighed by Congress threatens to cut a billion dollars in federal funding for public media. If you want to voice your opposition to these efforts and keep programming like Marketplace on the air, please consider contacting your congressional representatives to tell them that public media matters to you. You can learn more at marketplace.org slash action.
You're listening to Marketplace Tech. I'm Nova Safo. We're back with Anita Ramaswamy, columnist for The Information.
In the meantime, another story involving AI, this one in the video game sector where the union representing video game actors reached a tentative deal with studios that make games. There's been a strike for a year now, actually, and it could be officially over relatively soon if that contract, if the labor deal gets ratified by the union rank and file. And I should mention that SAG-AFTRA, the union involved, also represents folks here at Marketplace, a lot of the folks here at Marketplace, but we're in a different bargaining unit.
Having said all that, what's this deal? Do we have any details of what's in it, Anita?
So the deal is not actually finalized. It's just a tentative agreement that would essentially bring an end to the strike. And it has to be approved still by the board. But it includes some terms and conditions about how AI can be used. And it protects essentially the video game, a lot of the voice actors and performers who contribute their creative talent to the video games.
I know that had been the big sticking point that led to the strike. So let's talk about AI in video games and real-life physical actors. How could their work...
you know, their voiceover, the motion capture work that they do. How is AI threatening that? One possibility that a lot of actors and performers are concerned about is that if they contribute a little bit of their voice, then that voice clip could be used and the AI could generate something that sounds like them and talks like them, but isn't actually them speaking. So it sort of almost gets rid of the need to have a voice performer at all. And I think that's a huge concern for the industry.
And we're seeing the capabilities of AI to do things like this evolving dramatically. Just a couple of weeks ago or so, Google released its latest video generator called VO3. And that's video that's trying to look like a movie. But if you're trying to look like a video game, I mean, there are very cinematic nowadays video games, but there is a little bit more wiggle room there, right? So
you could stand to reason that AI could be more threatening to a video game actor versus a film and TV actor right now. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other, um,
Sort of interesting aspect of this is that video generation is a big part of the advertising industry too. And that's another area that employs a lot of creatives and could really be disrupted by the idea that it's so easy to go in and prompt an AI model to generate video for you. We're not entirely there yet, but Meta is one company that's really focused on within the next year, they've announced plans to roll out a bunch of tools that will help advertisers essentially go in and create ads end to end without any creative input.
I mean, you can just type in a bunch of keywords and you get an ad. That's the vision at least.
All right, well, let's move on to our next topic. We learned this week that legendary Apple Mac programmer Bill Atkinson died of pancreatic cancer. Atkinson is credited as the key programmer to come up with the graphical computer interface, the way we interact with computers. Basically, everybody interacts that way with computers now, and he came up with it during his time with Apple. And Anita, when you think back on Atkinson's legacy, what are the key inventions that we still use to this day?
There are so many, Nova. He had a really incredible legacy. But some of the key ones that I think of are, for example, QuickDraw, which is the technology that allows people to draw objects on the computer. He was also able to come up with this shape, which was like a rectangle with rounded edges, inspired sort of by traffic signs and street signs.
that is now, you know, this motif and this graphic that we always see when we're using computers. And the one that I think is the most brilliant is like he came up with the most simple concept of a menu bar on the computer. Yeah, everything that he was working on was about making a computer that
instinctual to use, right? Just like extremely simple and easy for any consumer to use. Yeah. And that's kind of a funny contrast, you know, just kind of going back to what we were talking about in our first topic today. When I think about liquid glass and I think about how that's been received, you know, I think folks are rightly pointing out that it's not exactly the easiest interface to use. It's not the easiest thing to see. I mean, Apple thinks it's really cool. They called it a digital meta material that bends and shapes light.
And that sounds very poetic in theory, but then when it comes to actually using it, at least to me, it seems like it's fairly complicated. That stands in direct contrast in my mind to some of Atkinson's innovations, like something as simple as the menu bar,
Which allows people to go exactly where they need to go on the computer without thinking about it. Yeah. And just the concept menu bar, you take it for granted because it is so such a natural thing that you just don't even think about that that's there. But they had to really plan out, you know, where it was on the screen, didn't they? They had to plan out how it functioned, every little aspect of it.
Absolutely. And, you know, I think that in general, there's a need for companies to focus a little bit more on UI design, especially in this new era of AI and AI on devices. And, you know, tech companies are really thinking through real time how to improve that process. And I was just thinking about how we heard the news very recently that OpenAI bought a startup that Johnny Ive, who used to run design at Apple, founded. Right.
for $6.5 billion. And so now Johnny Ive and OpenAI are going to be working together on a bunch of AI devices, some AI hardware. And it just kind of highlights the need for Apple and for all these other companies to return back to their roots in terms of making these devices and making these technologies easier for the day-to-day consumer to actually use. That was Anita Ramaswamy, columnist for The Information.
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Hi, everyone. It's Neil Scarborough, Marketplace's general manager with an important message. The recent rescission package being weighed by Congress threatens to cut a billion dollars in federal funding for public media. If you want to voice your opposition to these efforts and keep programming like Marketplace on the air, please consider contacting your congressional representatives to tell them that public media matters to you. You can learn more at marketplace.org slash action.