Next week's WWDC, Apple AI will still not have any "surprises"

In the fierce battle for AI leadership among tech giants, Apple is caught in an awkward game of delays. The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which opens next Monday (June 9), may not change this situation.

According to the latest report from Bloomberg, insiders at Apple are mentally prepared for a "disappointing" AI presentation at the conference, while outside observers are concerned that this event may further highlight Apple's shortcomings in the AI field.

Limited AI Openness: Not Big Enough "Big" Language Models

The report indicates that the most important AI announcement at WWDC will be Apple's opening of its foundation models to third-party developers.

This move will allow app developers to utilize the company's current device-side technology used for lightweight tasks such as text summarization. However, its large language model has about 3 billion parameters (a measure of its complexity and learning capability), which is far below the cloud models used by OpenAI and even Apple's own internal cloud AI functions.

That said, Apple has made progress in artificial intelligence recently. Internally, it has various models of different complexities. Currently, versions with 3 billion, 7 billion, 33 billion, and 150 billion parameters are actively in use. The 150 billion parameter model relies on cloud computing and is much more powerful than Apple's device-side technology, capable of more nuanced reasoning.

Internal benchmark tests indicate that the quality of this model is close to the recently launched ChatGPT. However, due to concerns about hallucinations and differences in philosophy among company executives, the company has delayed using this technology to launch its own chatbot.

However, there are currently no plans for a public release.

Apple's AI Dilemma

Last August, when developers first accessed the beta version of Apple Intelligence, Apple's AI narrative began to crumble. It was clear that this product was more about packaging than breakthroughs. The Apple Intelligence system lacks the powerful features and innovation found in systems from companies like OpenAI and Google. In the following months, features like Writing Tools, Genmoji, and Priority Notifications, while useful, failed to match the innovations of competitors.

Insiders at Apple believe that this conference may disappoint from an AI perspective. Others familiar with the company's planned announcements are concerned that these announcements may make Apple's shortcomings more apparent.

There are also signs that the scale of this event will be smaller than the past two WWDCs (which released Vision Pro in 2023 and showcased Apple Intelligence in 2024).

The company hopes to make up for this at WWDC 2026 next year, when they hope to convince consumers that Apple is an AI innovator. However, this "small-step iteration" strategy is risky as competitors advance at lightning speed.

Brand Strategy Instead of Technological Breakthroughs?

This year's WWDC seems to focus more on brand reshaping rather than technological breakthroughs.

Reports indicate that Apple is planning a massive renaming of its operating systems, adopting a year-based system—another sign that the company is trying to convince users it is an AI player and shifting the conversation away from the technology itself.

Meanwhile, the company will quietly repackage several existing features in applications like Safari and Photos as "AI-driven."

Future Plans Require Patience

Apple hopes to have a better story to tell in the coming years, with more features expected to be ready. Ongoing projects include:

• LLM Siri, a bold redesign of the assistant architecture

• A redesigned Shortcuts application

• An AI doctor service codenamed "Mulberry" and a redesigned Health app

• A ChatGPT chatbot competitor that can pull data from the open web, internally referred to as "Knowledge"