Apple Intelligence ads and the lack of a use case
Something that has struck me with the current AI hype cycle is just how bad the advertising and marketing is for AI products. I’m yet to see a convincing or aspirational advert for GenAI tools.
Apple has a series of adverts for Apple Intelligence which are perfect examples of this…
In this first ad, lazy office worker, Warren drafts an unprofessional email to a colleague using slang language before hitting ‘professional’ in the AI Writing Tools feature. The AI then intervenes, transforming the email into a formal professional message. As the ad finishes we see the shocked reaction of Warren’s colleague in the next office, with a smug-looking Warren looking on, still slacking off while the tag line “I am genius” appears.
In this second ad, actor Bella Ramsey is seen meeting their agent for lunch to discuss a script. Realising they haven’t read the long email outlining the pitch, Bella discreetly uses their iPhone’s AI Email Summary feature to pretend that they have understood the key points – despite having arrived totally unprepared. The advert ends with Bella smiling and looking pleased with themselves, while the agent says: “Great, I’ll tell them that you’re interested.”
While both of these ads do clearly introduce the new AI features they’re advertising, I wasn’t sure if they were trying to be ironic… Either way, I think they’re uncomfortable. The best selling point marketers could find for intelligent AI features is that they allow you to take your job less seriously, slack off, or arrive at a meeting with an important colleague unprepared.
Apple Intelligence: for when you want to do the bare minimum. Are you lazy or not taking your job seriously? Your smart phone can now help you hide that.
New technology can be inspiring and aspirational. Apple themselves have shown us this in the past. However, technology only does this when it’s part of telling a better story. Something that shapes a future people believe in and want to be a part of. Apple isn’t the only company desperate to market AI, but it’s clear they aren’t sure how to do it yet.
These might only be short adverts, but I would love to see more meaningful use cases. If anything, both ads fail to recognise the opportunity of imagining better work… Is your email really necessary? Otherwise, imagine the future scenario where my AI now auto-responds to your AI generated email summary.
I shared a post about this on Bluesky and it was pointed out to me that many people in companies and places like the civil service have a secretary who reads and summarises their emails, and whose job it is to triage correspondence… Apple Intelligence and equivalent AI tools simply do an automated version of this. True. And maybe this is the problem: how we’re trying to automate or streamline what may already be unnecessary or inefficient ways of working. Or, ways of working that remain extremely manual information exchanges, even with increased automation.
This is a reminder that, with or without technology, future progress is only as good as our imagination. And if the promise of AI is that it can make us all a little bit lazier, we should probably go back to the drawing board.
This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 20 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky and LinkedIn.