Is BigTech Bungling Generative AI?
The Copilot Era? Amazon? Apple Intelligence? Meta AI? Come on. Is this Clippy 2.0 Era? 😂
The skeptical sarcasm of Marc Benioff on some of the AI products out there is not wrong.
Hey Everyone,
If Generative AI is supposed to be a legitimate technology, how could some of the biggest companies be executing so poorly in it?
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I struggle with this question as I cover BigTech news. As capex in AI is clearly fostering Cloud and Advertising growth for existing monopolies and duopolies, their actual products don’t look too on point.
In 2024, major tech firms including Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), and Meta are expected to collectively spend around $189 billion on capital expenditures related to AI. But are these consumer and B2B products around AI going to generate sustainable revenue?
How would you rank BigTech in this formative era of Generative AI on product execution anyways?
Ranking BigTech in Generative AI execution 2022 to 2024
Google
Nvidia
Meta Platforms
Microsoft
Apple
Amazon
Note: it’s not even as if Google has executed that well in Generative AI as a whole during this target period.
Is Apple 2 Years behind in Generative AI?
Mark Gurman is a solid source on Apple news over at Bloomberg and recently in his Power On newsletter, Gurman's sources within Apple tell him that the company's own studies suggest its upcoming AI features lack the "wow factor" of rival technologies currently offered by the likes of Google, OpenAI, and Meta.
It’s not just that, they openly admit Apple’s in-house generative AI technology powering Apple Intelligence is more than two years behind industry leaders, and I’m not making this up, this is again according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Listen, China itself was supposed to be just one year behind in LLMs and open-source LLM innovation, six months ago. So why do some of their open-weight models seem ground-breaking?
However at least Apple Intelligence has some useful features for consumers. iPhones running the iOS 18.1 beta actually have access to some awesome summarization capabilities. While Amazon and Microsoft’s Gen AI products look clumsy at best and for the most part scattered and ineffective, I’m starting to see a glimmer in Apple Intelligence. It was first previewed this summer at Apple's WWDC 2024 event which I covered, this Apple Intelligence marks Apple's first big push into Generative artificial intelligence add-on on its products.
You can now record phone calls and have fairly good text transcript summaries. The call recording in the Phone app, the transcripts that appear in the Notes app or the Apple Intelligence-exclusive summarize tool — this is one of the best-implemented features in the iOS 18.1 update. So don’t sleep on iPhones and Google pixel phones really becoming gradually more infused and enhanced with AI. That at least is tangible for consumers and real people. However when it comes to the Enterprise and B2B side, it’s a whole other story.
Microsoft first thought Bing could rival Google with GPT-4, then it said the Copilot Era was dawning, now it’s yet another tune about Agents. How quickly these teams fail and pivot.
Have Microsoft Copilots Failed Already?
The place where we are going to see the highest failure rate is in Copilots and agents. Which brings us to Microsoft.
I could easily write separate pieces on how Amazon, Apple or other BigTech players have failed in Generative AI, but Microsoft was supposed to be one of the big winners with early access to OpenAI’s models.
They rushed the Copilot era out and it’s fallen predictably, flat. Not for any lack of trying! After a long list of Copilots most people and businesses have never heard of, Microsoft on Monday announced a new series of semi-autonomous agents that business customers can either configure to their liking or use straight out of the box.
Is this Clippy 2.0?
In this article I muse about a range of things, but try to stick on topic about the challenge of Enterprise AI and the rise of synthetic culture and digital Avatarhood.
Is the Agentic AI of 2025 really going to be a thing?
🌟📋🌱 (October, 2024)
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