“We believe AI is a really important investment area for Apple, and we’re going to be doing that incrementally on top of what we normally invest in our product roadmap,” said Apple CFO Kevan Parekh during Apple’s latest fiscal call. (AI isn’t Apple’s only spending target, either.)
While the billions Apple is investing are dwarfed by the huge infrastructure investments made by pure AI players, Apple’s infrastructure already exists — in the form of 2.5 billion actively used devices, the vast majority of which can already run some AI models natively on device. So, how is Apple exploiting this deployment advantage?
BYO-AI
Only this week, Bloomberg once again confirmed Apple intends to permit its customers to select their choice of AI service on their device. You’ll be able to pick Gemini, ChatGPT, or Claude as your default supporting AI service. This means that while you might continue to use Apple Intelligence for most queries, you’ll also be able to use one of those server-based AI choices for more complex tasks. Y
ou will also be able to opt to use those services to provide all your AI needs, but not until iOS 27, which will be unveiled at WWDC. These services will be provided within a new Extension system, which I suspect will work with the apps those AI developers are already building for iPhones. That could lead to a new ‘App Store for AI’ approach, which the company may be able to monetize. So, you’ll be able to select between AI services for tasks such as text generation and editing and powering Siri.
