Tim Cook says Apple doesn’t plan to charge for AI features

In a big new interview with Wired, Tim Cook explains that Apple is looking at its suite of AI features like ‘Multitouch.’ This means that instead of being a new avenue for subscriptions, it’s a fundamental part of an Apple product and used to entice people to buy Apple’s hardware.

This is big news and goes against reports from this summer that suggested Apple would someday charge for its AI features like Google and OpenAI do.

Further into the interview, Cook claims that his favourite Apple Intelligence feature is how it helps him summarize his emails and surface priority emails to the top of his inbox. He also finds Image Playground fun. I agree with Image Playground and the awesome Genmoji feature, which is a lot of fun for making custom images to send over iMessage. When it comes to the email application, I have been getting much less use out of it. Since my inbox is often filled with spam pitches from companies, my biggest problems aren’t summarization-related but instead with how much crap actually makes its way to me.

When Cook is asked if he worries that AI tools will degrade a person’s actual skillset, he responds by bringing up other tech tools like spreadsheets and Logic Pro and how the right tool can make someone more efficient while the end product is still the idea from the user’s head. The best example from this exchange to me is when Cook brings up how people worried that calculators would ruin math, but instead it made us all more efficient.

As the interview switches gears a few times, another interesting tidbit discusses how Cook worries about people endlessly scrolling on their phones and believes in Apple’s Screen Time limiters and parental controls. He mentions that he “fundamentally believes” that people should look at each other more than they look at their phones.

There is a lot more in the Wired interview regarding Cook’s views on the Vision Pro and health features in AirPods and Apple Watch, so if you’re interested, you can read the full interview here (paywalled).

Source: Wired