Apple should work on making AI useful instead of flashy.

Google and Microsoft have used their developer conferences to show off their creative AI skills. Now, everyone is looking forward to next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple Intelligence is likely to make its debut.

The company in Cupertino is under a lot of stress. Apple likely feels like it needs to do everything it can to impress its fans and owners now that it’s behind its competitors in AI. But that shouldn’t mean making too many features promises.

First, put reliability

Apple makes some of the most well-known electronics in the world, and its AI features should make them more useful. A lot of features that use AI need to connect to the cloud to get information or answers. On the other hand, if Apple can make some useful features run directly on the device, users may choose AI over cloud-based tools. The Voice Memo and Notes apps’ offline transcriptions might work.

Apple is likely to show summaries of messages and web pages, as well as simple text editing and picture creation tools. But a lot of websites, note-taking apps, and photo-editing apps already have those. To make its approach stand out, Apple needs to make it as easy and smooth as possible.

Put privacy first

Apple is likely to put privacy first even more, so Siri and other AI-powered features might not be able to run all apps. A story from Bloomberg says that AI features will only be available on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPads or Macs with M1 or later chips. Users will have to choose to use these features. If this is true, Apple is still being careful because it doesn’t want to be caught in the backlash from users, even though it’s behind the curve when it comes to adopting AI features.

Recently, the company got some bad press for its iPad ad called “Crush,” which showed creative tools being smashed by a hydraulic press. People thought that Apple was undervaluing artists, their tools, and the work that goes into making art by putting it in a small, business box. Artists already don’t like AI, so Apple might not want to make them mad again. So it’s likely to take a non-controversial stance.

Making Siri better

The biggest change that people expect is Apple to improve Siri so that it can better understand what people are asking and give them more accurate answers. Siri can’t do more than one thing at the moment. Should you ask the helper to set a 15-minute timer along with a 10-minute timer, it will do so. This may not need the help of creative AI, but Siri’s new look should have these things.

If Siri doesn’t get better access to apps as planned, Apple could make things easier for users by adding an AI helper that can help them make complex Siri shortcuts for jobs that need to be done in more than one step.

Rumors are going around that Apple will sign a deal with OpenAI to use AI in all of its operating systems. We don’t yet know how much of Apple Intelligence will be based on that deal. Because AI can cause hallucinations, Apple might not want to get too involved in content-related AI features just yet.

A lot of companies make big claims about AI-powered features, but when they deliver results that are wrong or biased, they let people down. Google and OpenAI have had to back off of AI features because they were wrong or violated copyright laws. Because of this, the business might not want to use LLMs (large language models) to make content.