Let the AI Assistant Die—Kill It if You Have To
The future of AI is probably not going to be in a bespoke assistant
Apple released a whole slew of new AI features that are genuinely useful for many people and they did it without branding it as a personal assistant. Things like Visual Intelligence now being able to see what’s on your screen, the ability to create calendar events and reminders from screenshots, a more powerful Spotlight search, and even the ability to use AI models in shortcut automations.
None of these features live under the ‘Siri’ brand, and most of them don’t even live under the ‘Apple Intelligence’ brand. They’re just…features. No pandering to investors, just cool tech, and that’s where I think we’re going to see the most useful AI features.
I’m tired of everything being a new assistant, you’ve already got one: your phone. I find it more valuable to just have your phone do things.
People talk all the time about how the best use cases for AI are when things are truly integrated with the system and this really feels like the current best iteration of that vision. These features aren’t siloed off into a separate place, they’re not even on a sidebar, they’re just there—right where you need them.
I do think we can eventually get to a point where we can build AI devices like R2-D2, BB-8, C-3PO, and even Mr. Data, but we’re a long way from there. The best implementations we have with our current device paradigm is exactly what Apple announced at WWDC, not some pin or some pendant, just a feature set that enhances your workflows as you know it in a really powerful way.
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