Looks Like Apple Can’t Quite Figure Out AI Gadgets Either

It’s been a bad month for AI gadgets, and that’s saying a lot. As if public opinion wasn’t already in the gutter after the collective letdown of Humane and its now-defunct Ai Pin, as well as its less expensive counterpart from Rabbit, the R1, reports have begun circulating that Sam Altman and Jony Ive, via their joint venture, IO, are also struggling to devise AI hardware that, ya know… works. But the fact that things are bad doesn’t mean they can’t get worse, and if new reports about Apple’s AI efforts are any indication, they just might.

According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is running into a few hiccups with its rumored robotic smart home hub, and I’ll give you one guess what one of those issues is. Per Bloomberg:

“The motor system has had engineering challenges, and the company has sought to find compelling AI uses for the device. That’s pushed out the current timeline to roughly two years from now.”

Mechanical challenges are one thing (that feels like a technical hurdle that Apple can throw money at and eventually resolve), but the AI part isn’t so simple. Devising useful AI features isn’t just a money or engineering problem; it’s a philosophical one. Before Apple figures out where to put its resources, it has to have a reason to devote those resources. And if the broader field of AI gadgets is any indication, those reasons haven’t been exactly forthcoming.

While there are plenty of AI features in existence right now (i.e., everything new and Gemini-related on Google’s Pixel devices), not many of them have resonated with consumers who either don’t know that they exist or haven’t been given a compelling reason to use them. If you can’t convince people to use AI features on a device that they have in their hands almost every second of every day, it’ll be even harder to convince them to use AI features on a device they have almost no frame of reference for, such as, I don’t know, a robotic smart home display.

Not to mention, everything is compounded by the next-gen Siri of it all. If there’s one place you want a next-gen voice assistant, it’s a smart home hub, but Apple has (somewhat infamously) struggled to deliver its promised chatbot-infused Siri, or at least one that works the way it should. Those struggles, by the way, are still firmly ongoing. And the rest of its Apple Intelligence features, while not quite as damaging to public perception, haven’t exactly blossomed yet, especially notification summaries, which Apple had to put on pause briefly, given the fact they, uh… were a bit of a disaster.

Maybe Apple will figure things out. The company doesn’t plan to release its arm-having robot for another two years, according to Bloomberg, and a lot could happen between now and then, but it’s hard to be optimistic with the way things are going. Per the Financial Times, Jony Ive and Sam Altman have struggled with just about every piece of their AI gadget (a palm-sized device that you can bring on the go), including how its voice assistant works and even how to get enough compute to power it via the cloud. Woof.

Clearly, there’s still a lot of work to be done before AI gadgets can be useful in the way that even the biggest tech companies are still trying to get them to be, but if there’s one company that could figure it out, Apple would be it. And if Apple can’t get the job done? Well, I’ve got bad news for Altman, Ive, and company.