Why Is No One Talking About Apple’s (AAPL) Long-term Artificial Intelligence Plans?

When it comes to Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), it’s been all about the AI delays, with a handful of notable AI features, including personal context, pushed out to next year, while the more ambitious Siri LLM looks like it could be delayed to 2027.

Indeed, Apple may have fallen further behind in the AI race than many upbeat analysts may have thought. With OpenAI going full speed ahead with its new open-weight model, while DeepSeek looks to continue making big waves, it seems like Apple could be as much as two or even three years behind the competition.

Add recent shortcomings of the less-than-helpful AI-driven message summaries and some harsh words from loyal supporter John Gruber, who’s critical of Apple’s AI roadmap, into the equation, and it seems like Apple is about to miss the rising tide in the AI waters that’s poised to lift most boats.

Combined with a still-premium valuation — shares go for 35.4 times trailing price-to-earnings (P/E) today — and dashed hopes for an AI-driven iPhone supercycle, and there’s a pretty strong case for why Apple may fall out of the cohort known as the Magnificent Seven. Indeed, there’s nothing magnificent about the 9% year-to-date slide in shares.

Despite the AI delays and growing doubts that Apple will ever be able to catch up in a race that’s still going at full speed, I continue to view Apple as a long-term AI winner that I believe will prove the doubters wrong, perhaps in as little as two years’ time. While the company’s marketing team may have been too quick out of the gate with its “more personal Siri” ads, all will be forgiven if Apple can serve up a polished product in a year or so from now.

Don’t make too much of the AI delays.

Maybe it’s not so bad for Apple to delay its new AI innovations by a year or more if it means getting a personalized product that’s crafted with care and privacy at the top of mind. When it comes to AI, things can go rather unpredictably, as we found out with Apple’s AI message summaries and Google Gemini’s rocky launch a few years ago.

As such, it makes more sense to take time and care to deliver a final product that really hits the spot, even if it means showing up years late to the AI party. Apple knows it’s better to be better than first. And DeepSeek’s disruptive impact suggests Apple can take its time to catch up rather than hit the accelerator. In fact, showing up a bit later to the AI party could have the potential to be far more profitable.

And while we’ll have to wait until 2026 or even 2027 to see if Apple Intelligence and smarter Siri can best what will be on the market, I do think that Apple will deliver on its promises as agentic AI takes center stage. What will allow Apple to differentiate itself in an AI market that’s become quite commoditized?

It all comes down to trust and data, in my opinion. With a firm stance on privacy and over 2 billion active iPhone users, the company has all the tools it needs to seize the personalized AI opportunity at hand. In any case, it already seems like Apple has earned the trust of billions at this point. And I’d bet that a vast majority of them will wait a year or however long it takes for Apple to get its AI features right. To me, Apple’s high degree of trust buys the firm more than enough time to play catch-up.

Apple could really make a splash once AI agents take off.

As it stands, large language models are pretty useful for a wide range of things. But as agentic AI comes into its own, the usefulness of AI is poised to level up, perhaps in a profound way.

With a recent Bloomberg report shedding light on its longer-term AI-powered Health app plans, which include a health coach and AI doctor, it seems like Apple could be playing chess in AI while some rivals play checkers. At this juncture, it seems like Apple is aiming to play the long game, rather than pulling ahead in the near-to-medium-term. While users may be able to see an Apple AI doctor next Spring, I’d be willing to give the company more flexibility on the release timeline. After all, an AI doctor is not something you want released until it’s 110% ready to go.

Perhaps Bill Gates’ recent comments on AI replacing doctors aren’t so far-fetched, after all!

Beyond Apple’s privacy focus and closeness with billions of users, the company also seems to be a master at targeting use cases where AI would be most useful for improving the lives of its users.

Perhaps starting with a use case and then building a specialized AI agent is a better way to go than starting with a model and then trying to find ways that it could be put to work. Although only time will tell, I do think Apple’s slow and deliberate approach to AI could pay off and allow it to further differentiate itself in a race where being first won’t necessarily be met with the biggest rewards.

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