Tim Cook promises Apple will ‘break new ground’ in GenAI this year

Apple just scrapped its decade-long, multi-billion-dollar car project, and we finally know where all that energy is going.

Speaking at Apple's annual shareholder meeting, CEO Tim Cook promised that the company will "break new ground" in generative AI later this year.

According to multiple reports, several employees from the abandoned EV team have already been reassigned directly to Apple’s generative AI initiatives.

What Apple is actually cooking

Compared to Microsoft, Google, and Meta, Apple has seemed unusually quiet during the AI boom. In its Q1 earnings call, Cook admitted Apple was taking a slower, more deliberate approach to customer-facing AI.

Behind closed doors, though, things are moving fast. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple plans to give Siri and Spotlight search a massive overhaul with generative models, enabling complex queries and multi-turn conversations.

Apple is also reportedly working on AI slide generation in Keynote, automated playlist creation in Apple Music, and AI code completion in Xcode.

Most of these features are expected to debut at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) this summer alongside the next versions of iOS, macOS, and iPadOS.

The breadcrumbs were already there

If you've been watching Apple's research team lately, the pivot isn't a total surprise.

The company has quietly dropped several academic papers and open-source models over the past few months. That includes Keyframer, a tool that animates still images, and MGIE, an image editing model driven by plain-text prompts.

Bloomberg previously reported that Apple is spending around $1 billion a year to catch up in AI, developing its own internal model codenamed Ajax and a testing chatbot dubbed "Apple GPT."

On the hardware front, rumors suggest the upcoming iPhone 16 lineup will feature a significantly upgraded Neural Engine to handle AI workloads directly on your device.

Why it matters

Killing the car to go all-in on generative AI is arguably the smartest pivot Apple has made in a decade.

Right now, using generative AI still feels fragmented. You have to open a browser tab or jump into a standalone app. If Apple can weave generative AI directly into the operating system—letting Siri actually act across your photos, messages, and calendars—it could instantly deliver the most practical consumer AI experience on the planet.

That said, Apple faces a serious tightrope walk with privacy and battery life. Apple’s brand identity is built on on-device processing and keeping data local. If these models require heavy cloud compute, Apple will have to explain how that squares with its privacy promises.

For the rest of Big Tech, Apple's official entry changes the rules of engagement. Benchmarks won't matter as much anymore; the fight will shift entirely to who can put reliable, invisible AI into the hands of billions of everyday users.