Tim Cook Defends Apple’s AI Delay: ‘We’ve Rarely Been First’

Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke to employees at an all-hands meeting today, providing some insight into Apple’s work on AI. According to Bloomberg, Cook said that AI is going to be bigger than smartphones and the internet, and that it’s a priority for the company.

“Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab. We will make the investment to do it,” Cook told employees.

Cook pointed out that Apple has dominated several markets even when the company wasn’t first to the technology. “We’ve rarely been first. There was a PC before the Mac; there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod,” Cook said, suggesting that Apple will play a major role in transforming AI in the future.

The all-hands meeting comes a day after Apple’s earnings call, where Cook made similar remarks about Apple’s plan to make significant investments in AI. During the call, Cook said Apple was open to making an acquisition that would accelerate its roadmap.

Apple has held talks with Perplexity and Mistral about a potential major AI acquisition, and the company has also discussed using technology from OpenAI or Anthropic for an LLM-based version of Siri.

Apple software chief Craig Federighi was also on hand to discuss ‌Siri‌, and he said the company’s efforts to overhaul the underlying ‌Siri‌ architecture are promising. Apple is getting the “needed” results from the ‌Siri‌ overhaul. “This has put us in a position to not just deliver what we announced, but to deliver a much bigger upgrade than we envisioned. There is no project people are taking more seriously,” Federighi said.

Cook and Federighi may have been aiming to reassure employees about Apple’s dedication to AI due to Meta’s efforts to poach AI experts. Several Apple AI engineers have left Apple for Meta because Meta has been offering massive pay packages, and morale at Apple has been falling.