How Apple AI signals the decline of apps and the web itself

And what this might mean for news publishers

Reflecting on Apple WWDC 2024 on Monday, my thoughts turned to the ill-fated Humane AI Pin. In bending over backwards to build a device without a screen, while also trying to ignite an entirely new platform, Humane sold a cringe-inducing gadget that seemed doomed to be laughably inadequate. Disconnected mostly from any of your other devices and your Apple or Google profiles, the Humane pin had to learn about you from scratch. Rather than solving a problem, Humane’s design is more about avoiding a screen at all costs, even when relying on a screen is more useful compared to having every output read aloud to you by what sounds like a lobotomized cyborg. The company is already reportedly exploring a sale.

And now, after fellow tech titans Microsoft, Google, and Meta have already embraced generative AI, Apple entered the fray by announcing AI (amusingly rebranded as “Apple Intelligence”) lightly sprinkled through all of its devices and experiences. Unlike their ex-employees, Apple is poised for success. The company already has a massive platform with more than 2.2 billion active devices around the globe. They sell devices that already know everything about you, and their aim with any product, and that goes for AI too, is to become an intrinsic – or inescapable – part of  your life. And with their announcements from WWDC 2024 this week, Apple is now aiming to build a truly personal AI assistant that has been the dream of techno-optimists for decades, while finally fulfilling the potential of the long-neglected Siri.

Your Apple device will offer to send your query to ChatGPT… after asking your permission first So far, Apple’s carefully cultivated and gigantic walled garden has also resulted in a technology ecosystem where other inventors and entrepreneurs can take part in reaping the rewards. But that wasn’t always the case – when the iPhone launched in 2007, there was no App Store. But eventually Apple realized that opening up their device to others could also lead to major rewards for the company, notably up to 30% revenue share on app revenue.

And so now with AI, the question is how the platform will connect to third parties, if at all. So far Apple has offered a hint in the huge advantage they appear to be awarding to OpenAI’s ChatGPT: When Apple’s own “Apple Intelligence” AI needs to answer a more “general” query not based on your personal data, your device, including your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook, will offer to send your query to ChatGPT – after asking your permission first.

Apple has said they will eventually incorporate other AI models, such as Google Gemini. And one imagines eventually there will be the option to enable the feature by default to eliminate the hiccup of asking for approval every time a request goes to a non-Apple AI.

Another question raised by WWDC 2024 is that the revenue model for Apple’s planned AI integrations is not clear. Google has paid Apple billions to be the Safari web browser’s default search engine, an agreement that has now come under scrutiny over antitrust concerns. Is Apple paying OpenAI to use their service, or is it the other way around? Or maybe no money is changing hands for now, as both parties benefit: Apple doesn’t yet have a capable AI model for the kinds of queries your device might outsource to ChatGPT (and can blame OpenAI for any of the usual generative AI weirdness that might happen); OpenAI is only too happy to vacuum up more users to reinforce their market lead and potentially upsell to their paid service.

We may spend less time using apps. Are news publishers ready?

And now this brings us to our weary, long-suffering news publishers. Late to adapt to digital, slow to embrace mobile, missing the boat with the majority of online advertising revenue opportunities, playing servant to platforms offering a quick buck to stem short-term losses, and now scrambling for direct consumer revenue. How will the new wave of AI platforms toss and turn these businesses whose journalism plays such a core role in functioning democracy?

In some of Apple’s demonstrations of the new AI, we saw how the goal is to avoid apps or the web altogether. For example, in order to remove friction for a user when updating a calendar invite or planning a trip, Siri itself can simply use “Apple Intelligence” to dig into all it knows about you and perform actions through APIs to move appointments, plan trips, or send emails.

In the end, if Siri, newly empowered by Apple Intelligence, lives up to its potential it’s easy to imagine we’ll spend much less time using apps or the web at all. Are news publishers, struggling with resources and still focused on catching up to the past, ready for this rapidly arriving future?

With the “state of the Internet” so fluid, and how people interact with information continuously evolving, news publishers need to think about what they can offer that’s especially unique and valuable to their communities. For example, with Apple’s efforts focused on personal data and individual assistants, what can publishers do to bring groups of people together around shared, niche interests? For example, in scenarios where people want to connect with actual people and not just talk to their bot, what in-person experiences could a publisher uniquely offer in their community? Are there unique collaborations with local businesses and organizations that a publisher can orchestrate for the benefit of their audience?

What types of content are so extremely localized, or specialized, that they wouldn’t be part of any person’s data – to be addressed by AI on the device – or the wider general knowledge of the large language models? What are better ways to publish and distribute such “long tail” information instead of the blank text box of a chatbot or a conversational voice interface?

Humane, a company that raised hundreds of millions in venture capital, flopped where large technology platforms are currently succeeding, doomed by pride and misplaced priorities, by neglecting to truly solve a problem for their would-be users. News publishers need to learn from Humane’s example, take a hard look at what they alone can offer that has real utility for their customers, and make a plan for solving problems as generative AI is poised to potentially kill mobile apps, and browsing on the web itself.