Apple Intelligence Helps Boost Company Stock To New All-Time High – CNET [CNET]

June 11, 2024 Ian Sherr technology

After the iPhone maker announced its AI plans, shareholders pushed its value up as much as 6% Tuesday.

Ian Sherr Contributor and Former Editor at Large / News

Ian Sherr (he/him/his) grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so he’s always had a connection to the tech world. As an editor at large at CNET, he wrote about Apple, Microsoft, VR, video games and internet troubles. Aside from writing, he tinkers with tech at home, is a longtime fencer — the kind with swords — and began woodworking during the pandemic.

Investors pushed Apple’s value to new all-time highs Tuesday, rising more than 6% and above $205 per share. The bump came a day after the company announced a series of upgrades planned for its iPhones, iPads and Mac computers that integrate popular new artificial intelligence technologies.

At its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple announced a new service it calls Apple Intelligence, which is designed to bolster its Siri voice assistant while also helping device owners with their daily tasks. In a recorded presentation from Apple Park, the company demonstrated examples of how its AI can perform tasks such as grabbing flight information from an email, meal plans in a text message chain, and location information from a restaurant website to answer complex queries like, “Is my parents’ flight on time, and will we make it to dinner?”

Apple also demonstrated examples of how its AI can summarize long emails, help people write and rewrite messages and create new emoji to express themselves. And it announced a partnership with OpenAI, whose ChatGPT has attracted more than 100 million users.

“Together, all of this goes beyond artificial intelligence — it’s personal intelligence, and it’s the next big step from Apple,” CEO Tim Cook said while announcing the new initiative, which the company will allow some users to begin testing later this year.

Alongside the announcements, Apple renewed commitments to user data privacy while inviting security experts to test it.

“Built in a uniquely Apple way, we think Apple Intelligence is going to be indispensable to the products that already play such an integral role in our lives,” Cook added.

Apple is currently one of the most highly valued companies in the world, at more than $3.1 trillion. Microsoft, which is also seen as an AI market leader, is valued at $3.2 trillion.

More than mere announcement

Apple grabbed attention not just by announcing its plans to join the current AI race, which had already been widely reported, but rather with its approach. The company repeatedly discussed how its AI technologies were built to focus on seemingly simple tasks, avoiding many of the blunders that companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Google wrestled with as they released AIs that responded to users with embarrassingly incorrect images, racist conspiracy theories and dangerous health advice.

Apple instead demonstrated AI built into products such as its email and messages apps, helping people to summarize something they’d just received or change the tone of something they’d just written.

“People aren’t going to feel like they’re using generative AI, it’s just that they’re using super-cool features,” Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin told Yahoo Finance after the Monday event. “It’s about making these things easier to use, more engaging.”

Apple said it plans to make its Apple Intelligence available in beta as part of iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and MacOS Sequoia this fall in the US.