Apple Intelligence is late to the AI party and brought us… a new set of emoji’s
Marco van Hurne
I build AI companies | Data Science Strategy | Data Governance | Certified AI Compliance Officer | The Future Group | Beyond the Cloud | Author of the Machine Learning Book of Knowledge
This one is for the crazy ones, the misfits, the laggards in turtlenecks. The ones who see innovation two years too late. You can dismiss them, laugh at them, or scroll past their keynote streams because they’re just now discovering AI. They invent nothing, revive old ideas, and call it “magic”.
Steve Jobs probably had an alternative explanation in mind when he came up with the “Think Different” campaign.
While the world is tapping into quantum multiverses and birthing AI demigods that rewrite reality, Apple proudly introduces… Genmoji.
Yes, people, that is the alleged blockbuster AI gem brought to you by them Product Peeps from Poopertino.
Ah, Genmoji - the custom built by AI smileys for you, and your existential dread.
Now, somewhere in Cupertino, there’s a marketing intern that whispered in tiny Tim's ears: “This will save us before Xmas sales comes, mr. Scrooge”. And meanwhile, Siri (bless her half-baked circuits), she finally admitted defeat and outsourced her homework to ChatGPT.
Hahahaha.
Yes, my friends.
No longer do you have to be bothered by the digital butler who mistakes “Set an alarm for 6” for “play Justin Bieber at max volume”.
Gone are the days when you would whisper, “Call Mom”, and Siri would dial your ex. To Siri, clearly, trauma is a feature and not a bug.
Do you need directions? She will guide you straight into a lake and still declares “Turn left now”. Sorry, Michael Scott*, Siri didn’t invent this move, but she perfected it.
Or, better yet, have you ever tried dictating a message, like: “I’m on my way, dear”. That quickly becomes “I own my whale, deer”, because, Siri thinks you’re Poseidon meets Bambi.
Yet now, they seem to have seen the light of AI shine like an aura around Tim’s visionary appearance, and this jester of misfires can finally leave the stage through the backdoor and let the grown-ups handle the job.
And Apple has stumbled into the AI party like the dude who shows up drunk at 2 AM, and is clutching a half-empty bottle of booze and is shouting about "I haaav zum new ideaz youz needz to hear". Ideaz everyone else had discussed hours ago.
But hey, at least they’re here now.
This might not be bleeding edge type innovation, but you can get away with it if you’re saying that it’s just fashionably late - wrapped in brushed aluminum and a bloody high price tag.
* The Office, played by Steve Carell: he blindly follows his car’s GPS and drives straight into a lake.
More smut after the commercial brake:
Ah, my darling Apple, you. 😉
To me, you were the bringer of sleek, revolutionary tech.
But your problem now is that your AI game looks like it was slapped together during one of your quarterly panic attacks in a Cupertino conference room.
A new survey confirms what we all knew deep down: iPhone users want AI, but 73% think Apple Intelligence is as valuable as a screen protector made of toilet paper. And don’t think that it’s only Apple that takes the beat’n, because Samsung does it even worse. About 87% of Galaxy users are tossing their Galaxy AI features into the "why bother" museum of modern arts (read: trash heap).
And how does Apple plan to claw back its dignity in the AI arms race?
Genmoji.
That’s right.
Custom emojis, brought to you by artificial intelligence.
Forget crafting sentient tools of the future like what OpenAI, Meta, and the Goog is doing.
Apple’s grand vision for AI is letting you generate an emoji of a banana doing…., well, whatever you want it to do.
Brilliant 👑
Chapeau 🎩
Chef’s kiss 😘
Standing ovation for that one 👏
Bow down peasants ! 🙇 🙇♀️
We are not worthy says the crowd….
And Tim whispers "Game-changing", while he takes a sip of his hazelnut latte, with a shot of whiskey to drown his sorrow (sorry for all you hazelnut latte lovers. It is not done to poor a drizzle of whiskey in your latte, I know).
And meanwhile them peeps at Google’s HQ build quantum-powered Willow chips that taps into the multiverse to perform computations that classical machines won’t be able to finish in a Brazillion, Gazillion, Ohmygodzillion years (basically a couple of trillion lifetimes of our universe).
Oh wait!
I forgot one major upgrade.
You thought that Siri retired, and moved to florida, but our eternal underachiever just got a new upgrade because it outsourced its brainpower to ChatGPT. Just say, “Ask ChatGPT”, and Siri will obediently forward your query to OpenAI’s chatbot. Siri is finally admitting, “Yeah, I’m useless on my own”.
If this feels like a participation trophy moment for Apple, that’s because it is.
At least Siri can now help you craft the perfect text (but it still takes five years to set an alarm).
Two years behind
While Google is over here unleashing quantum hell that might just well be exploiting parallel universes, Apple is doing what?
Launching a glowing smiley face icon on your emoji keyboard.
Their writing tools are nice, but ranking Notification Summaries as one of Apple Intelligence’s standout features is not worth applauding about. Would you applaud someone for remembering to breathe? And while we’re on that note, does anyone even need "smart replies" for their emails?
You still have to click send, you freaking genius.
People that study studies (analysts) say that Apple Intelligence is at least two years behind.
Two years.
By the time Apple introduces "Genmoji 2.0" (now with animated avocado toast), Google will probably be birthing artificially intelligent gods that solve the Riemann hypothesis while writing Shakespearean tragedies, and zapping us all to the netherverse.
Apple fans have waited with bated breath for iOS 18.2, and what did they get?
Tools so underwhelming that they make Clippy* look like an AI visionary.
To put it in perspective: Google’s Willow chip just crunched numbers so hard that it literally spat qubits in the face of physics. It solved a task in five minutes that would take a supercomputer 10 septillion years.
That’s a friggin 1 followed by 24 zeros.
To provide you with a little context: Ze universe (remember the Deutchs’ rule? - pronounce the universe as ze universe) is only about 14 billion years old. So Google AI is exploring multiple RickVerses and alternate realities, and Apple’s AI is proudly turning your crappy sketch of a dog into a cleaner, AI-generated version of a ……crappy sketch of a dog.
Progress?
Apple claims that Genmoji and ChatGPT integration will turn things around.
Like this you mean?
🙃
I think more likely this:
👎
These “features” absolutely make great bullet points for press releases. That I am sure off. But IRL, they offer little to no value. Apple’s AI version is a desperate attempt to slap a shiny schticker on an outdated product and call it new. And iPhone users like me, yes, bless our loyal souls, we are left wondering why we coughed up a thousand bucks or more on a glorified emoji machine.
Hold on.
Do NOT zap away just yet.
Here’s more grim reality for ya…
…Because Apple Intelligence is not intelligent.
It is a toddler who is fumbling with crayons while at the same time their competitors build AI-fueled doomsday machines.
And Apple just wants you to go to sleep and think that Genmoji and Siri’s ChatGPT lobotomy are the future.
Don’t be fooled, dear Apple Sheepl.
It’s all just a ploy to distract you while they scramble to catch up with tech that actually matters. Because if this is Apple’s "AI revolution", we are all doomed to a future of useless emojis and half-baked Siri queries.
But somewhere out there, in a parallel universe, Apple actually have invented something groundbreaking.
But in this universe?
We’ll have to settle for a smiley face with sunglasses and Siri shrugging its digital shoulders.
Let’s use Rick’s portal gun and abduct a living version of Steve Jobs. Perhaps that will save us from “accountant" Tim’s visionary outlooks.
Signing off from the Genius Bar of broken dreams,
Marco
* Clippy is short and cute for Microsoft’s Paperclip - the useless bot-wannabe that did… absolutely nothing useful.
Well, that’s a wrap for today. Tomorrow, I’ll have a fresh episode of TechTonic Shifts for you. If you enjoy my writing and want to support my work, feel free to buy me a coffee ♨️
Think a friend would enjoy this too? Share the newsletter and let them join the conversation. Google appreciates your likes by making my articles available to more readers.
To keep you doomscrolling 👇
Workplace design expert, passionate about spaces that empower organisations and their people to do their best work.
5dWhat a great article!! well...yet another great article! love it! 👍 😉