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Apple’s AI strategy faces doubts

o Delay in Siri’s major upgrade raises questions on iPhone super-cycle hopes

personalized Siri would not be coming as early as hoped. Adding to the pressure, Amazon in February announced a new version of its Alexa voice assistant that is powered by genAI. “It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year,“ Apple said. Theories vary on why Apple is having trouble seizing the AI moment. For Marcus Collins, marketing professor at the University of Michigan, Apple’s struggles with genAI and Siri in particular may be more due to the importance the company gives to data privacy than any problem with innovating. For AI to be personalized, it needs to consume massive amounts of personal data. And “Apple hasn’t let up on the gas

when it comes to privacy,“ Collins told AFP. But at some point, “people’s information, creations, language... are all being exploited to help grow better AI,“ and squaring that circle might be harder than bargained for by Apple. For tech analyst Avi Greengart, “The fact that Apple has advertised Apple Intelligence so heavily with the iPhone 16 is a bit of a black eye, because most of what was promised in Apple Intelligence is not in the iPhone 16.” But he cautions that even if Google’s Gemini AI features in its Android line of phones are way ahead of anything Apple has delivered, customers may not have noticed much. “Even the best implementation of AI on phones today doesn’t fundamentally change the way you use your phone yet,“ he said. “No one has delivered on the full

vision and that gives Apple time to catch up – but it certainly needs to catch up.” Still, Apple’s harshest critics complain that Apple rests too much on its laurels and the uber-popularity of its iPhone. Moreover, the stumbles on AI came swiftly after lackluster reception of Vision Pro, Apple’s expensive virtual reality headset that has failed to gain traction since its release in 2024. Despite the recent negative headlines for Apple and the fact that its share price is down 8% since the start of the year, it remains the world’s most valuable company and its stock is still up almost 30% from a year ago. And Apple reported a whopping US$124.3 billion (RM551 billion) in revenue in the year-end holiday quarter, even if sales growth fell shy of market expectations.

NEW YORK: Has Apple, the biggest company in the world, bungled its generative artificial intelligence (AI) strategy? Doubts blew out into the open when one of the company’s closest observers, tech analyst John Gruber, earlier this month gave a blistering critique in a blog post titled “Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino,“ which is home to Apple’s headquarters. The respected analyst and Apple enthusiast said he was furious for not being more skeptical when the company announced last June that its Siri chatbot would be getting a major generative AI (genAI) upgrade. The technology, to be released as

part of the Apple Intelligence suite of iPhone software, was to catapult the much-derided voice assistant’s capabilities beyond just giving the weather or setting a timer. Investors hoped the upgrade would launch the iPhone on a much needed super-cycle, in which a new feature on the smartphone proves so tantalizing that users rush to snap up the latest and most expensive models. Apple Intelligence and its promised Siri upgrade was very much supposed to fuel that demand, starting as soon as the release of the iPhone 16, which came out in September. Instead Apple quietly announced on March 7 that the highly

Protesters target Musk at Tesla outlets across US, Europe, Canada NEW YORK: Demonstrators descended on Tesla dealerships across the US and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages like “Musk is stealing our money”and“Reclaim our country,“ the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Teslas in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as “terrorism.” Hundreds rallied Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in New York’s Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his so called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is dramatically slashing the federal government. Amy Neifeld, a 70-year-old psychologist who had not joined a protest since marching against the Vietnam War in the 1970s, accused Musk of leading the country toward fascism. “I’m Jewish, so I grew up with a great awareness of fascism,“ she told AFP. “And it has just gotten uglier and uglier” since Trump returned to the White House. “He acts like he’s the vice-president,“ said New York protester Eva Mueller of Musk. “He’s dismantling, actively, our government, he’s dismantling our democracy.” The protest was organised by the environmental activist group Planet Over Profit, which argues “stopping Musk will help save lives and protect our democracy.” In Washington’s posh Georgetown neighborhood, some 150 people gathered in a festive mood on an unseasonably warm day, dancing and cheering as passing cars honked. Protests also took place in Florida, Massachusetts and California, as well as in European cities such as London, Berlin and Paris. In Canada’s Vancouver, where around one hundred people protested at a Tesla dealership, one person in a dinosaur costume held a placard that said, “You thought the Nazis were extinct? Don’t buy a Swasticar.” A small group of Americans held signs outside a Tesla dealership in the French capital, including one that read “Send Musk to Mars now.”

The WHO is facing a nearly US$600m funding gap this year and has no choice but to begin making cutbacks. – UNSPLASH PIX

WHO to cut budget by fifth after US pullout GENEVA: The World Health Organisation (WHO) has proposed slashing a fifth of its budget following the US decision to withdraw, and must now reduce its reach and workforce, its chief said in an internal email seen by AFP on Saturday. “The US’ announcement, combined with recent reductions in official development assistance by some countries to fund increased defence spending, has made our situation much more acute,“ said Tedros.

membership fees. “Despite our best efforts, we are now at the point where we have no choice but to reduce the scale of our work and workforce,“ said Tedros. “This reduction will begin at headquarters, starting with senior leadership, but will affect all levels and regions,“ he told staff. Earlier this month, Tedros asked Washington to reconsider its sharp cuts to global health funding, warning that the sudden halt threatened millions of lives. He said disruptions to global HIV programmes alone could lead to “more than 10 million additional cases of HIV and three million HIV-related deaths”. The WHO is conducting a prioritisation exercise, to be completed by the end of April, to focus its efforts on core functions. Since taking office in 2017, Tedros has made it his mission to reform the organisation’s finances and put them on a more secure and predictable footing. To overcome the risk of relying on a handful of traditional major nation-state donors, the WHO now also seeks philanthropy and public donations.

“While we have achieved substantial cost savings, the prevailing economic and geopolitical conditions have made resource mobilisation particularly difficult. Last month, the WHO’s executive board reduced the proposed budget for 2026-2027 from US$5.3 billion to US$4.9 billion. “Since then, the outlook for development assistance has deteriorated, not only for WHO, but for the whole international health ecosystem,“ said Tedros. “We have, therefore, proposed to member states a further reduced budget of US$4.2 billion – a 21% reduction from the original proposed budget.” In the body’s last two-year budget cycle, for 2022-23, the US pitched in US$1.3 billion, representing 16.3% of the WHO’s then US$7.89 billion budget. Most of the US funding was through voluntary contributions for specific earmarked projects, rather than fixed

The WHO is facing an income gap of nearly US$600 million (RM2.6 billion) in 2025 and has “no choice”but to start making cutbacks, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the message sent Friday to the UN health agency’s staff. Besides announcing the US pullout from the WHO after returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump decided to freeze virtually all US foreign aid, including vast assistance to health projects worldwide. The US was by far the WHO’s biggest donor. “Dramatic cuts to official development assistance by the US and others are causing massive disruption to countries, NGOs and United Nations agencies, including WHO,“ Tedros said in his email. He said that even before Trump triggered the one-year process of withdrawing from the WHO, the organisation was already facing financial constraints.