A while ago, I suggested that by H2 2024, we'd start to see an influx of close proximity, on-device AI agents. A quick glance across the chip makers' roadmaps at the start of the year suggested that an investment in dedicated NPU/AI processing power would enable lower latency embedded low-level 'agentic' capabilities. With Microsoft, Google, and now Apple all showing their OS implementation hands with Copilot+PC, Gemini, and Siri+ (Apple Intelligence) respectively, the foundational superpowers which will drive AI-aided consumer content creation, consumption, and distribution are in place.
Arguably, the release of these platforms has come at a time when a little bit of the gloss and promise of what advanced ML and AI can do for consumers has begun to wane. Perhaps, rightly so. Still, the most common interaction with 'agentic' tools are through transactional web service layers like ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot search. In each case, the action-based services need to be initiated by the user, who needs to have some idea what they want to achieve and, like the Google and Bing search engines before them, be able to parse their request into a format/prompt that the service can understand.
The next incarnation of AI services from Microsoft, Google, and Apple are different though. Having had my hands on all three ecosystems for the last couple of months, it's fair to say it's less about what you can see and more about what is happening under the covers. As our digital asset libraries grow rapidly in size, and our digital worlds become more and more disparate and seemingly disconnected, close proximity, on-device personal AI services promise to simplify and optimise our worlds by helping create, access, and share the things we care about more easily and effectively.
The result: things will just get easier to do - from finding that one photo that summed up that crazy weekend in Ibiza, to creating a video of your babies first steps, to booking last minute travel to go and see your favourite band play live, or finding the right kind of plant to go in the corner spot by the kitchen window - all will be enhanced with the application of data driven, user centric, intelligent services. The real power of the new generation of AI platforms is that these will operate behind the curtain, constantly monitoring user needs and intent and most importantly their digital real estate, and delivering what the user needs just as, or I suspect, before the user knows they need them.
I've been heads down for the last couple of months investigating and testing these new capabilities, and they are real, they are incredibly valuable, and soon everyone will be using them, just most people might not realise they are.