IT's no secret that APPLE is lagging behind Google in integrating AI into its products and software. But how late was it on display at Google I/O2024 this week?

Google's annual developer conference was full of ai demos and announcements, so this topic dominated the entire opening keynote. Google's AI efforts have been driven by the fact that improvements to Android15 (which is certainly an important topic if you own an Android phone) have been relegated to a modest announcement on Google I/O Day 2.

With APPLE's adoption of AI as the centerpiece of this year's iOS18 update, Google's AI showcase highlights the need for Apple to bridge the gap with its products. And while Apple is certainly cutting out its job to bring the iPhone platform to where Android is in terms of AI, Apple is more than you think

After seeing the Google I/O keynote last week, Apple thinks it's pretty close to matching Google's AI capabilities and will launch a splash screen with the iOS18 release later this year.

Google has been lauded for its Circle To Search feature, which was developed by Samsung. Available on selected galaxy flagship and pixel phones, Circle to Search, you can tap or circle anything in the image, search results and another tab will slide up on the screen. Once you find out what you need to do, you can dismiss it and go back to what you were doing.

With Google I/O, Google announced that the search Circle will become smarter and gain the ability to understand symbolic expressions, diagrams and graphs. From Google's description, the improvements will primarily benefit students as they work their way through physics and matching searches.

In a way, there was Circle, the Ios equivalent for searching for several years in the form of Apple's visual search function. Sure, the visual search is limited compared to the circle to search, but more importantly you have to search for information about landmarks, plants, pets and food, among other things, is to visually search the mirror circle to the best function of the search by viewing the results in a tab rather than sending it to another app.

We haven't heard much about Apple planning a visual look-up on iOS 18, but it's not unprecedented that the next major iOS release will see further improvements, as recent iOS updates have extended the capabilities of that feature. This includes everything from extending the kind of information you can get in visual search to allowing you to access features in many of the iPhone's built-in apps, what

Google Workspace gets its own section of the I/O keynote, and Google executives are delving into new AI-powered features in apps like Gmail. Highlights include the ability to summarize multiple message conversations and pull specific data from emails using the new Gmail Q&a feature. Even auto-generated replies are being boosted because the AI-generated responses are tailored to the context of the message they are replying to.

There are some signs that Apple has something similar in mind to iOS18. Specifically, Rumors tips the page word processing app to add a writing assistant that can suggest how to start a document or how to make your writing more concise. Similarly, there are rumors that Keynote will be equipped with AI features that will help create decks for presentations.

While these iOS18 additions can't get close to the depth of what Google offers in its workspace app, it certainly sounds as if Apple sees an opportunity to add similar tools to its built-in productivity app - at least if these rumors are to be believed.

Both Google and Apple are trying to revamp their on-device assistant, with Google much along in this process. Google Assistant has been superseded by Gemini, google's AI model.Gemini should support more complex queries and tasks than you are used to. 

Later this year, Pixel phones will be able to access Gemini Nano in multi-mode. This is a slim, on-device version of gemini that you can use to generate text, summarize existing text, or perform other tasks. More importantly, the latest version of Gemini will allow you to understand the context and know which apps you are in and what you see on the screen. The multimodal feature means Gemini can also contextualize sights, sounds and spoken words.

Apple's Siri plans are more opaque just because they are likely to be revealed as part of Apple's planned iOS18 preview. But given Apple's recent announcement on a large language model, it's almost certain that Siri2.0 is in development. Powered by more robust AI power, Siri can respond to more complex requests. If the report on Apple's AI plan is accurate, it will run perfectly on the iPhone to improve performance and privacy.

If there is one area where the iPhone experience is clearly lagging behind Android 1, it is in the way that each platform handles the phone. Android is much more advanced in this aspect, especially if you're using one of Google's own Pixel phones, 1.

The latest pixel can intercept an incoming call and understand enough context to ask what the person is calling and relay that information to you. The assistant answering the call on your behalf also sounds quite natural. Throw features to help you navigate through the phone book and check appointments without picking up the phone, you have a pixel and a competent phone app.

Google plans to add more, detailing features it plans to leverage AI to detect if an incoming phone sounds like a scam and alert if it senses something suspicious is happening. Its fraud detection will keep your phone conversations private and occur on your device.

The closest Apple has to the call screen feature is the live voicemail feature added in ios 17, which allows you to send incoming calls to voicemail and get real-time transcripts to see if you need to answer the call instead. This is much shorter of Google's call management features, especially with the robotic voice that Apple uses for live voicemail calls.

It is unclear whether Apple plans to add more features to its iOS 18-powered phone app, but the areas where the iPhone can stand to become smarter are definitely not.

Many of the blanks surrounding Apple's AI ambitions could be filled next month when APPLE hosts WWDC2024. LIKE GOOGLE I/O, AI HAS BEEN A KEY TOPIC OF DISCUSSION AT APPLE'S ANNUAL DEVELOPER CONFERENCE.WWDC will also showcase the iOS18 preview, giving you the first glimpse of how Apple's AI efforts will be incorporated into the phone. But even after WWDC, questions about Apple's plans will remain. For example, the iPhone16 is unlikely to debut before the fall, so we're probably still in the dark about whether the new phone will feature its own AI capabilities that aren't available on Apple's existing phones.

Nevertheless, WWDC will be the first to see if the gap between Google and Apple's AI tools for phones is actually as large as it looks.