“How do you shorten it? Apple Intelligence?” That’s the question I posed to several Apple employees at WWDC 2024, and their practical answers were comically absurd.
“We’re just called Apple Intelligence,” they tell me. “Yeah, but you say that every time? The acronym AI is right there!” I would reply, a hard smile and clenched teeth, like a real-time human programming error. Longer than Intelligence.
There is no doubt that Apple Intelligence means a lot to the company. It’s Microsoft’s (yet unproven) attempt to compete with Copilot and Google’s Gemini. It’s a way to make Apple look “hip” with ChatGPT. And it should provide a number of new features for consumers. But Apple Intelligence is never “AI” for Apple.
Normally, I’d write this off as a silly branding secret. But as we cover Apple Intelligence, this becomes a problem. It’s a long phrase that just begs to be shortened to “AI,” but how do you differentiate that acronym from the general concept of ChatGPT, Copilot, and AI? During the WWDC 2024 keynote, Apple only mentioned the term “artificial intelligence” three times: twice referring to previous AI features and another referring to “other AI tools” such as ChatGPT.
At this point, I’ve decided to simply call Apple Intelligence “Apple AI”. It is shorter and differentiates the product from its competitors. And yes, it just means “Apple Apple Intelligence,” but everyone still says “ATM machine” and “PIN number.” It’s not my fault Apple decided to co-opt the acronym “AI” all together.
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