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Apple's AI isn't a letdown. AI is the letdown

Apple has been getting hammered in tech and financial media for its uncharacteristically messy foray into artificial intelligence. After a June event heralding a new AI-powered Siri, the company has delayed its release indefinitely. The AI features Apple has rolled out, including text message summaries, are comically unhelpful.

Its “walled garden” of iOS — despised by developers and fair game for accusations of monopolistic behavior, to be sure — is also part of the reason one billion people have learned to trust Apple with their sensitive personal data. Because in addition to being humans with jobs and social lives and laundry to fold and art to make and kids to raise, we should also learn how to tiptoe around the limitations of large language models that may or may not return accurate information to us. As Hard Fork co-host Casey Newton notes in the same episode, it’s not as if Google or Amazon has figured out some incredible use case that’s making users rush to buy a new Pixel phone or an Echo speaker.

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