Apple’s big report on artificial intelligence should make many startups nervous

When Apple releases something new, it can make other companies wary.

That was the case at the iPhone Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this week, during which Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives introduced a number of functions related to artificial intelligence it will be coming soon to technology devices.

Soon after the presentation, the Internet began speculating about what this might mean for startups offering similar services.

“How many startups did Apple kill in one hour? about your Apple Intelligence event?,” said a user via his TikTok account in a post that went viral. “Let’s tell them.”

Just because Apple positions itself as a direct competitor to an app or service doesn’t necessarily mean that app or service is doomed to extinction.

It is more or less known that Drew Houston, the CEO of Dropbox, once refused to sell his company to Apple. In an interview for Business Insider In 2017, Houston himself assured that Steve Jobs told him that he believed Dropbox was a feature, not a product.and said something like, “Okay, I guess we’ll have to go get you.”

Both Houston and Dropbox survived, and today the cloud storage platform, which even went public, continues to compete with iCloud. Dropbox is currently valued at more than $7 billion (about 6.5 billion euros).

However, there are many examples where Apple has made a splash by including a feature in its devices similar to what a startup or small company offers.

Remember flashlight apps? The iPhone maker included Flashlight in iOS 7 years ago, so downloading a third-party app is no longer necessary. It’s also worth remembering the popular note-taking app Skitch, which was eventually sold to Evernote. Apple introduced its own tool for Mac and made this feature the default.

With updates announced at WWDC, Apple Intelligence will be able to rewrite, correct and summarize text that appears in various applications on Apple devices.. Additionally, it will also have an AI-powered image creation tool and an updated Siri with enhanced text and language recognition capabilities.

Other highlights include a new Passwords app that allows users to store and access passwords, and a whiteboard-like Math Notes tool for solving equations and creating graphs from text.

Who should be nervous now?

Those who attended keynote address Apple began commenting on social networks about those who could be on the list of possible victims of the Cupertino company. Among them would be Grammarly, Midjourney, Humane AI PIN or 1Password.

Math startups or artificial intelligence calculators, writing apps, and other organizational apps may also be replaced by some new updates.

However, a Grammarly representative said: Business Insider that his company welcomes Apple to a segment in which it has “operated for over 15 years.”

“Whenever new competitors enter our market, the reality is that we see greater demand for Grammarly,” a spokesperson for that company said. “We are focused on continuing to innovate our OS-agnostic messaging service with enterprise-grade AI that runs on more than 500,000 apps and web pages.”

Eric Noyes, professor of entrepreneurship in artificial intelligence at Babson College (USA), noted that Apple’s new AI features aren’t a ‘big deal’ for the startup world in general.

Noyes noted that WWDC 2024 may have an immediate impact on related startups in the sector, but Apple Intelligence will not have an impact on AI startups in general.

Companies have several months before Apple Intelligence hits the market. Even then, the new system will only be available with the latest software: iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.

However, it was probably a busy week for many startups as they realized that the iPhone maker had come to their town, ready to eat a piece of their pie.