Tim Cook Tells Apple Employees It’s Willing To Invest In AI

Apple CEO Tim Cook has held a company-wide meeting to discuss plans for how it will compete in the AI space after a lackluster showing to date.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Cook spent an hour telling the company’s employees that Apple sees the “AI revolution” as being even bigger than that of the smartphone.

“Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab,” Cook told employees, according to people aware of the meeting. “We will make the investment to do it.”

Cook’s comments were seen as a rallying cry, adding that Apple has an “amazing” collection of products on the way and that Apple Intelligence will be part of those products.

The meeting was held at the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park and follows the news that more Apple AI employees have switched allegiances to Meta. Other internal issues are thought to include the Siri team’s discovery that Apple was working with OpenAI and others in an attempt to bolster its ailing digital assistant. An in-house upgrade of Siri’s capabilities is yet to come to fruition.

Cook also reportedly pointed to Apple’s history in being later to the market, but ultimately prevailing. “We’ve rarely been first,’ Cook told employees. ‘There was a PC before the Mac; there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod.”

He went on to add that Apple “invented the modern versions of those product categories,” saying that he expects AI to be a similar story.