Apple’s ubiquitous iPhone is about to break new ground with a shift into artificial intelligence that will do everything from smartening up its frequently dim-witted assistant Siri to creating customized emojis on the fly.
The new era will dawn yesterday with the unveiling of the hotly anticipated iPhone 16 in a Cupertino, California, auditorium named after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who pulled out the first iPhone in 2007 and waved it like a magic wand while predicting it would reshape society.
Apple has sold billions of iPhones since then, helping to create about $3 trillion in shareholder wealth. But in the past decade, there have been mostly minor upgrades from one model to the next — a factor that has caused people to hold off on buying a new iPhone and led to a recent slump in sales of Apple›s marquee product.
The iPhone 16 is generating a bigger buzz because it is the first model to be tailored specifically for AI, a technology that is expected to trigger the biggest revolution in the industry since Jobs thrust Apple into the smartphone market 17 years ago.
The advances included in the iPhone 16 could set up Apple to be “the gatekeeper of the consumer AI revolution,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote in a research note. MDT/AP
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