I “attended” Apple’s announcement yesterday because I was curious about their AI announcement. I wasn’t disappointed – here is my summary about what Apple’s AI release means for broadcasters in a special Tuesday edition of The AI Edge.
Yesterday, at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the trillion-dollar tech giant announced a slew of forthcoming technical innovations, product upgrades, and Apple Intelligence, their branding for an Apple-centric version of AI.
Today, broadcasters can breathe a sigh of relief. Although Apple’s new products will challenge the business models for some companies, Apple stayed clear of broadcasters’ main revenue models. Companies in verticals like spelling and grammar (Grammarly), password management (1Password), pregnancy monitoring (Flo), mobile money transfer (Venmo) are not so lucky.
Unlike past announcements (remember Apple Beats One radio with worldwide broadcast studios?), Apple’s WWDC 2024 announcements will potentially help broadcasters and their employees.
“Apple Intelligence,” was the big announcement of the day. Just like with previous big announcements from Apple, they did their homework. Apple historically has taken an already-released technology, neutralized the consumers’ negative perceptions, increased usability, and changed the marketplace behind a single, unified platform. Apple is following the same playbook with AI.
Apple Shapes Technology Interaction and Consumption
Think about what Apple did with digital music consumption and how this compares to AI. Prior to the iTunes Music Store and the iPod, users had to either download music from a legally-dubious file sharing site or purchase tracks from an RIAA-approved portal like Rhapsody, which limited the music’s use and portability. Tracks purchased on one site would not work with all players/platforms, and the players needed to “phone-home” to nanny the whole listening experience. In this environment, Apple launched iTunes, which included legal, downloaded tracks from all the major labels. iTunes created a singularity that was not only fair and above-board, but also compensated artists and led to the eventual ubiquity of mobile music consumption.
In AI, there are similar parallels. First off, AI’s biggest problem has been privacy. Most of the big AI companies have ridiculously fuzzy privacy policies.
- Just last week, Microsoft received heat for its AI “Recall” feature, which takes screenshots of a user’s computer and stores them unencrypted for later retrieval by AI engines.
- On Monday, Adobe’s privacy policy led users to believe that all creations could be monitored and used for AI training.
How Apple Intelligence ‘Solves’ AI Problems
Problem 1: Privacy
Knowing this, Apple had explicit privacy messaging during their presentation that included where data is processed, and they highlighted user control in every Apple Intelligence product reveal.
- Most AI processing will occur on-device.
- AI processing that requires more computer processing will occur online in Apple’s Private Cloud Compute (PCC) — encrypted and unshared. Apple’s PCC is audited and certified for data privacy.
- Users who want data processed by ChatGPT will be explicitly asked to provide permission every time.
Problem 2: Complexity
AI’s second hurdle inhibiting early adoption is complexity. Today if you want AI to analyze your email letter to a client and suggest changes you need to paste it into ChatGPT or use a clunky plugin with a premium subscription. Same deal if you want to analyze spreadsheet data. (And then what happens to your company’s sales data after you upload it? Yikes!) Apple Intelligence is available in all Apple apps across its ecosystems on all devices. No secondary subscriptions to OpenAI, Canva, and Grammarly. No copy and paste. It’s all in the operating system.
Importantly for radio and podcasters, Apple Intelligence is also promised to strengthen the utility and accuracy of Siri. Anyone who has struggled to have Siri or Alexa play the right radio station in the right room will surely appreciate any improvements in the digital assistant category.
Three Ways Apple Intelligence Will Help Broadcasters
Beyond Siri, here are several ways in which Apple Intelligence will help broadcasters in coming months:
1. Apple Intelligence will encourage the adoption of AI. Technology adoption over time is usually represented as a bell curve. Depending on the research, 15-35% of Americans are using AI, which would include about a third of the adoption bell curve posted here — innovators, early adopters, and some early majority users. These features will push the rest of the users into using AI technology by integrating it into all the apps on Apple platforms and not requiring separate accounts, subscriptions, and clunky add-ons or cut-and-pastes. It’s the difference between having a separate digital camera and one that’s just there on your phone.
2. New tools will make day-to-day workflow easier. Mail will compose, correct, and auto-suggest email responses to clients, and sort email by urgency. Ad copy can be written on-device after its given ONLY the copy points, and AEs won’t have to worry that AI writing an ad for a client’s big sale will share the client’s confidential sale info with the world. Managers can record one-on-ones that are automatically transcribed, analyzed and summarized instantly. AEs now have an automatic set of ears on every CNA. (The AEs won’t have to worry about misremembering what the client said; they only have to worry about the client misremembering the conversation!)
3. The technology will enable content generation. This has always been the hope for AI, and we’re getting there. In the demo, the presenter asked Siri to make a video using pictures of his kid fishing. Think about video recaps. “Hey Siri, make 60-second video of ROCKFest with a heavy metal music bed and use only photos with the Duff Beer logo.” Your station’s event coordinator or videographer just saved six hours of work, and she made great content for YouTube and a client recap. AEs can use AI to generate custom graphics, photos, and illustrations for their pitch decks without logging into a stock photo site to use the same image that’s been used for every other pitch the client has seen.
The ease of the integration will lead to new creations we cannot even imagine in 2024 — just like the phone camera lead to food blogging and QR codes everywhere.
That’s the good stuff. Now the caveat. Just because Apple did not announce enhancements to streaming media during this announcement doesn’t mean that won’t happen in the future. What if Siri allows Apple Music to become a DJ-hosted music service for Apple Music users and can chime in with personalized updates and the weather — and she “hits the post” every time? It would be a short-lift for Apple to make this happen.
This makes it particularly urgent that broadcasters take the time and resources we have now to deepen and personalize (localize) our relationships with our audiences and our clients. That’s in our wheelhouse and our insurance that we will continue to serve and entertain our communities for the next hundred years as we have for the last century.
Originally published by Jacobs Media
