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Comment by nerdjon | Hacker News Reader

My opinion is that most of the real uses of AI (like ML has always been) will be largely hidden things that are LLM based but not screaming at your face "AI". Particularly once the bubble pops and money stops being shoved into things just sticking an LLM in a pretty package with little to no value.

Some of the things coming in iOS like notification summaries and similar features are big examples. It's clearly LLM based but it's not a lot of the shoving AI needlessly into things that we are seeing now and provides a true improvement given the notification overload that we have right now.

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Photo manipulation is another example.

You can see the wisdom of how Apple is approaching this. In particular, to be on device whenever possible so as not to be dependent on network bandwidth, and to tie features to new hardware (to drive sales).

How I wish this would actually work properly. One can have only so many sepia filters and cat ears before realizing photo manipulation still does the same it was doing ten years ago. I have yet to see an app actually improving the photo quality - and no, doubling the pixels is not that. Yes, you cannot create details where they are missing, but sometimes they should be obvious, like fixing the foliage (leaves in the distance always look like... leaves), trying to clarify the contours (not only by bumping the contrast) and I could go on. Yet no, every new AI-powered image processor only brings a new approach to sepia filters and adding cat ears.

Exactly. Ask customers "do you want AI in your phone?" and their response will probably be "meh", as shown in the article. But ask "do you want notification summaries, a better camera in low light, Siri to be able to look up more things, searchable photos, etc?" - and they absolutely will.

Lol no one i know wants any of the things you mentioned.

Normies hate the AI hypetrain bullshit.

Okay let’s be fair, people do want better low-light photos. And text recognition in photos. And translation.

Or maybe they don’t, but I somehow see people using those features all the time.

I’m really curious to see if this VC wet dream will materialise or if reality will prevail. Currently I’m pretty sure that the only people who are still enthusiastic about the AI bullshit are the ones with some form of vested interest, so they’re trying to fabricate the demand.

Actually I like all those, but I don't care whether they are with AI or not. So slapping AI on them is a definite "meh" for me, show me results not trendy labels.

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