Tim Cook responds to questions over Apple’s AI plans as world waits for iPhone’s new features

Apple may be late to new AI technologies but it will be the “best”, its chief executive Tim Cook has said.

The company revealed a host of new features, branded as Apple Intelligence, during its software event earlier this year. They include new tools to summarise emails and a rebranded and updated version of Siri, for instance.

The new features were intended as an answer to increasing questions over Apple’s plans for AI, amid the growth of technologies such as ChatGPT. But they have also led to questions of their own, around whether Apple is late and if it will catch up with its competitors.

Apple itself is reported to believe that it is around two years behind its competitors on technologies such as large language models, which underpin ChatGPT and similar experiences. And when Apple introduced its iPhone 16 last month, it relied heavily on Apple Intelligence features – but those tools are still yet to arrive on the handsets.

Now Mr Cook has suggested that it is not Apple’s speed on those features that matter – but how good they are. The company aims not to be first, but best, he said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

“If we can only do one, there’s no doubt around here,” he said. “If you talk to 100 people, 100 of them would tell you: It’s about being the best.”

Mr Cook suggested that some of those upcoming updates will help show that Apple can be the best. He said that it would make people’s lives “profoundly different”, he said, pointing to tools such as the summarisation of emails.

“I think we’ll look back and it will be one of these air pockets that happened to get you on a different technology curve,” he said.

Mr Cook also suggested that Apple’s work on augmented reality will progress in much the same way. Apple is still early with the product but it is aiming to grow, it he said, while admitting that the Apple Vision Pro headset remains niche.

“At $3,500, it’s not a mass-market product,” he said. “Right now, it’s an early-adopter product. People who want to have tomorrow’s technology today—that’s who it’s for. Fortunately, there’s enough people who are in that camp that it’s exciting.”