TECH - Limiting 'Apple Intelligence' Features Not A Tactic To Boost iPhone Sales Say Top Executives: 'We Would've Been Smart Enough Just To Do Our Most Recent iPads And Macs Too' | Benzinga
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has unveiled its new AI features, collectively known as Apple Intelligence, which will only be available on the latest iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models. Now, Cupertino's top executives have clarified that the features are not a ploy to drive new iPhone sales.
What Happened: Apple’s new AI features, which are part of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, will only be accessible on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models. The AI features utilize on-device, generative large-language models to enhance the user experience across Apple devices.
During The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2024, Apple’s AI/machine learning head John Giannandrea, marketing chief Greg Joswiak, and software engineering chief Craig Federighi were questioned by Daring Fireball's John Gruber about the necessity of the latest iPhone models for the new AI features.
Giannandrea explained that the computational expense of running these large language models, or inference, necessitates the high bandwidth, Apple Neural Engine size, and processing power of the latest iPhone models.
"You could, in theory, run these models on a very old device, but it would be so slow that it would not be useful."
When asked if this was a strategy to ...