Apple appears to be placing a significant bet on artificial intelligence once more, as the media reports that the company intends to entirely redesign its Health app and incorporate a service akin to a “AI doctor.” The action is in line with CEO Tim Cook’s view that the Cupertino-based tech giant’s greatest gift to humanity would be healthcare.
“If you zoom out into the future, and you look back, and you ask the question, ‘What was Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind?’ it will be about health,” the Apple CEO stated during a 2019 interaction.
According to Apple whisperer Mark Gurman, the company’s health team is aiming to employ AI to enhance the lives of its customers, even if the company’s ambitious ambition to include a non-invasive glucose monitor into the Apple Watch is still several years away.
Apple’s plans for AI doctor:
Media article claims that Apple’s team is working on Project Mulberry, which would entirely redesign the Apple Health app and include a health coach via an AI agent to mimic some of the analysis performed by a real doctor.
According to reports, Apple’s next health app would gather information from all of the user’s gadgets, including their iPhone, Apple Watch, earphones, and even third-party goods. The app’s AI agent will then utilize this information to provide tailored suggestions aimed at enhancing the user’s well-being.
How far has Apple’s effort for AI Coach moved?
According to reports, Apple is now collecting data from its own doctors to train its AI agent, with intentions to hire other physicians in the future. According to reports, the Tim Cook-led business is also seeking a “great doctor personality” to serve as a host of sorts for its redesigned Health app and is constructing a facility close to Oakland, California, where physicians may film their video material for the app.
Gurman doesn’t describe this doctor’s personality in great depth, but it may be an attempt to give the app a human touch, much like Google and OpenAI have done with their chatbots by hiring real artists to create voices.
According to reports, Sumbul Desai, the physician who oversees it’s health team, has made the new health app a top priority. Jeff Williams, the company’s chief operational officer, is also actively involved in the project.
If the redesign of the Health app proceeds as planned, we may see it’s AI Doctor in action around the same time next year. It is scheduled to deliver its iOS 18.4 update on April 1st (not an April Fool’s joke).
The project is “in full steam,” according to Gurman, and the updated app may be available as early as iOS 19.4. The stable version of iOS 19, which is expected to launch with the iPhone 17 sometime in September, will be unveiled by Apple during its WWDC 2025 event on June 9–13.
Apple’s love-hate relationship with AI:
Apple has recently placed large expenditures on artificial intelligence, but the corporation has not yet seen any notable returns as competitors like Google and Samsung keep releasing new features while its own attempts run into difficulties.
At WWDC 2024 last year, Apple first showcased its AI initiatives with iOS 18. Given Apple’s track record of perfecting features rather than releasing them rapidly, there was still a lot of hope surrounding the company’s AI debut, even though Google and Samsung had already released several of their famous features, such Circle to Search.
At best, Apple’s implementation of AI capabilities, which it refers to as Apple Intelligence, has been sporadic. When the iPhone 16 was released last year, the majority of the features that were revealed at WWDC 2024 were not yet accessible. Since then, these functionalities have been made available in phases.
Apple even stopped displaying AI-generated summaries for news and entertainment applications after the BBC and several other news sites criticized the news summary feature, which was first included in the iOS 18.3 beta release.
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