😺Apple's AI strat, explained

Welcome, humans.

It was a bit of a surreal day yesterday for those of us at the HumanX Conference in Vegas. On the one hand, you had a ton of AI talent and cool people all gathered in one place talking about the future of AI—exciting stuff!

On the other hand, you had a major stock market sell-off because of all the geopolitical wtfs in the air right now.

That’s not the kinda stuff we cover here at The Neuron, but here’s a brief explainer on what happened (according to AI).

Now, let’s get to the cool AI stuff:

Example 1: Tavus, with the most excellent retro booth we’ve ever seen. This is an actual working version of Tavus’ Conversational Video Interface (an AI agent “OS” that can engage in natural, human-like video chats) running on these old Macs.

Example 2: we got to meet quite a few cool people, like Poolside CEO Jason Warner, who today more or less cosigned what we wrote yesterday about AI application interfaces being the big opportunity right now (unless you’re like Jason, and are “literally going after AGI through software.”)

We’ll have a lot more cool insights from our 1 on 1 chat with Jason (and chats w/ other cool folks, too) to share soon!

Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

• Apple delayed its smart home hub because of Siri.
• Report found powerful AI voice-cloning tools lack adequate safeguards.
• AI tractors and sensors improved Napa Valley vineyard operations.
• US Army created an AI tool for precise battlefield anesthesia delivery.

Can Apple’s AI woes turn into a win?

Apple’s AI ambitions are looking rough. The company just delayed its smart home hub—a device meant to rival Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub—because Siri isn’t ready.

That’s a big problem. Apple has been lagging in AI, and this was supposed to be a step toward catching up. Now? It’s postponed indefinitely.

See, Siri is holding Apple back. Analysts at Citi just cut their iPhone sales growth forecast for 2025, dropping it from 5% to 2%. The reason? Neither Siri nor Apple Intelligence are smart enough yet to make new iPhones feel like a must-have upgrade.

Investors are worried. Apple’s stock just had its worst single-day drop since 2022—down 4.85%—as part of a broader tech sell-off.

This kind of stuff likely doesn’t help either:

Also, customers are annoyed. As customers continue to wait for features that were marketed last fall, some who rushed to upgrade are pissed (see: Reddit and Reddit and Reddit and so on, for ∞)

The company began tempering expectations about as fast as they rolled out their marketing plan. In a fall interview with WSJ tech columnist Joanna Stern, software chief Craig Federighi did little to calm investor or customer concerns.

Apple knows it’s behind though, and is making moves. It just reorganized its AI team, bringing in Kim Vorrath, a longtime Apple exec who helped lead Vision Pro software development.

And it’s investing $500B over the next four years in AI and domestic manufacturing. Part of that includes a brand-new AI server factory in Texas that’s expected to create 20K jobs.

Our take: When Apple announced it was partnering with ChatGPT in 2024 instead of rushing out its own solution, it was the right move. Google tripped, stumbled, and bruised itself all the way through 2024 with the opposite approach. Frankly, Apple does not need to rush this.

Many people bring a similar loyalty to ChatGPT as they do to Apple—and they like that their iPhone can now use the same AI they already use every day. Apple should ride that partnership as long as it can until it has something worthy of the Apple name to serve up.

Even that isn’t foolproof, though. There is one teeny tiny x-factor that could be their Achilles heel—that’s whatever OpenAI and Jonny Ives have up their sleeves.

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Prompt Tip of the Day

Need a fresh perspective? ChatGPT can review your work as a CEO, client, or C-suite exec to sharpen your message. Try these prompts:

• “Pretend you’re a tech CEO—what concerns would you have about this report?”
• “From a C-suite view, what weaknesses do you see in my business case?”
• “As a potential client, what questions would you ask after reading this?”

Pro Tip: Role-playing with AI helps spot gaps, refine arguments, and make your work more compelling. It’s not too shabby with a troglodyte-infested dungeon either.

Treats To Try.

1. *Incogni removes your personal data from the open internet so scammers and identity thieves can’t access it. Protect yourself online with Incogni—get 55% off with code NEURON.
2. SambaNova can help you research any topic via their new open-source Deep Research framework—runs on Llama + DeepSeek, try it for free here (video).
3. Enso is an AI Agent marketplace (a lot like Fiverr with a subscription) that hosts more than 300 agents you can access for one monthly fee.
4. ​TheySaid 2.0 transforms boring surveys into engaging chats, making it perfect for businesses aiming to gather deeper customer insights.
5. ​Duck.ai offers private, anonymous access to leading chat models, ideal if you like to protect your privacy online.
6. Currents AI breaks down social media discussions in real-time, making it simple to understand trends and audience sentiment.
7. Lanceboard makes it easy to find top freelancers with matching, whether you’re hiring for a project or just exploring new talent options.
8. Opera's Operator is an assistant that can handle online tasks—like booking flights or shopping—directly within the Opera browser, offering a seamless and efficient browsing experience.
9. TestMyPrompt is a prompt management platform designed to help test, store and manage prompts more efficiently.
10. Granite 3.2 is IBM’s family of open-source AI models tailor-made to solve your actual business problems (not random benchmarks)—try here (download).

See our top 51 AI Tools for Business here!

*This is sponsored content. Advertise in The Neuron here.

Around the Horn.

We’re so cooked.

• World, Sam Altman’s other company, is developing a super app with iris-scanning tech for secure user verification to compete with Elon's X.com.
• AI voice-cloning tools are getting more powerful—but a new report says their guardrails are pretty flimsy, which raises concerns about misuse.
• AI is transforming vineyards with autonomous tractors and smart sensors—-helping winemakers in Napa Valley enhance sustainability and efficiency.
• The Army is working on an AI-powered tool to help medics deliver anesthesia more precisely on the battlefield—because especially in combat, pain management matters.
• Here’s a great recap of Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol, or MCP, which lets AI connect to other tools and data to get helpful, real-time information, and 7 reasons why why it “won” over similar systems.
• Listen to this recap on the pros and cons of Manus, the latest viral AI agent.

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Tuesday Ticker

Here are the results from last week’s poll:

We asked you to compare which snippet you preferred—and the winner was written by Claude 3.7!

Here’s what you said:

• S.M. chose Claude “The bottom snippet said when to use which model.”
• E.W. chose GPT-4.5: “It's more compelling and interesting to read (the top one). The bottom one is stating the obvious without drawing any interesting inferences, and also could be deduced from the top one.”
• Z.K. chose Claude: “More user-oriented, top one seems to generic with it's 'ooh what about ethics' disclaimer.”

Now, a new one poll for ya…

Would you be comfortable with AI tutors assisting in your or your children's education?

Pick an answer and write in with more details.

A Cat's Commentary.