Over the last decade, Apple has spent around $700 billion on stock buybacks, and with this money, the Cupertino tech giant could have bought Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, OpenAI and Anthropic and become a dominant force in both EVs and AI. 

Most recently, Apple unveiled a $110 billion share buyback programme after its Q2 profit and revenue dropped. As a result, its stock surged 12% in after-hours trading as CEO Tim Cook predicted sales growth with upcoming AI-driven features. 

The buyback initiative rewards its investors and aligns Apple with other tech giants amid concerns over rising generative AI investment. 

It also enables Apple to manage its capital structure effectively, returning capital to shareholders without ongoing dividend commitments, especially amid economic uncertainty. 

Additionally, this buyback signals to the market that Apple’s management perceives its stock as undervalued, potentially boosting investor confidence and attracting more buyers.

Apple’s EV ambitions come to a halt 

After a decade of effort, Apple reportedly ended its ambitious Project Titan, halting the development of its electric car in favour of shifting focus to generative AI initiatives.

Lately, Apple has been investing heavily in expanding its AI capabilities. This focus is evident in its development of proprietary AI models like the OpenELM model, designed to run on Apple devices. 

The model is particularly notable for optimising deep neural network layers to enhance efficiency. Apple’s use of a neural net with just 1.3 billion parameters stands in contrast to models like GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini. 

Apple GenAI Dreams  

At the latest earnings call, Cook said, the recent quarter was thrilling, as we launched Apple Vision Pro to show the world the potential that spatial computing unlocks. 

“This is just the beginning, we’re also making exciting product announcements and sharing more about the vision for generative AI in coming weeks and months,” he added. 

Cook is all set to unveil significant upgrades at the iPad Let Loose event on May 7 and tease new AI capabilities. 

Apple has been making waves lately with its focus on integrating generative AI capabilities into its devices. In the past few months, it has introduced its latest creations, the MM1 models—a new series of multimodal AI models with an impressive 30 billion parameters, alongside ReALM, which integrates text and images to enhance its understanding and responsiveness to prompts. 

Apple also introduced ‘Ferret-UI,’ a multimodal AI model designed to execute precise tasks concerning user interface screens while interpreting and acting upon open-ended language instructions. This advancement suggests a future where verbal commands may seamlessly supplant traditional finger gestures for iPhone navigation. 

In addition, another research paper unveils Keyframer, a tool purportedly capable of generating animations from static images, alongside an AI model tailored for image editing.

Siri will be powered by Gen AI 

At the same time, Apple has been in talks with various tech giants, including OpenAI and Google, to integrate generative AI into its upcoming iPhone series. Recently, Apple has rekindled discussions with OpenAI to integrate AI functionalities into iOS 18 (iPhone 16). 

Additionally, in 2023, reports indicated that Apple invested significantly in research and development to improve Siri’s conversational skills. Integrating GPT-like technology into Apple’s infrastructure would essentially improve Siri.

The primary capabilities of a GenAI-driven Siri will probably stem from Apple’s in-house models operating on the device, while supplementary functionalities such as generating images and crafting long-form text may be sourced from third-party entities like OpenAI, Baidu, or Google.

Furthermore, Apple is also experimenting with an internal chatbot. The upgraded Siri boasts natural conversation abilities and enhanced user personalisation. According to Mark Gurman, a significant change will be removing ‘Hey’ from ‘Hey Siri.’ 

What’s next? 
At last year’s WWDC,  Tim Cook and other Apple executives did not mention the term ‘artificial intelligence’ even once. But, at the recent earnings call, everything changed — Cook said that he is optimistic about its “opportunities in generative AI” and is “making significant investments,” hinting at ‘big AI plans’ coming at the WWDC, next month.