Apple Intelligence, AI Subscriptions, and AI Store
After the whole debacle I had with Zadok the Priest on the previous post, I received some spams suggesting I should subscribe to their pro or plus models. I take it my search had used up most of free queries I had for the day. As far as I know, neither Google nor OpenAI openly publish the limit of their respective free tiers. From the literature I could find, it appears both companies have no fixed plan for free tier. For those of us who wish to cut subscriptions, having one less pricing info makes it untenable to plan a DIY project with a real quote.
One of the strong suits with current Apple Silicon Macs is its unified memory architecture — many try to use it to run local LLM. If one doesn’t suffice, they cluster multiple Macs. I wouldn’t get into potential cost-effectiveness of such a build, but it is an interesting concept for those who are looking into Mac Mini and thinking whether it can handle local LLM. My queries for the LLM are often limited to literature, and I’m not asking it to write me a 200 pages detective novel. But for queries looking a mechanical wordsmith, an AI subscription is simply an overkill.
This is where my food for thought comes in, irregardless of which model Apple ultimately plans on using or building. The rumors and the marketing materials surrounding Apple Intelligence thus far have indicated it will be included with the product, and if the product cannot handle a query on its own, it will be run on Apple’s private server. Again, if there is no hidden subscription beneath the Apple Intelligence,— and it better not, Apple sold iPhones with Apple Intelligence promised. In theory, we could hope for Gemini-based model with 1 trillion parameters to be available for all iOS and macOS users free of additional charge, and quite frankly, nagging for more subscriptions.
On current implementations of different AI models on the Apple platform, the queries made on a device is rerouted through the user’s account billing. As far as I understand it, complex questions and queries beyond free tier still require additional subscriptions to ChatGPT. Gemini is not added as of yet. I find it likely Apple will be forced to open up “default” AI settings, which then begs a question: after Apple Intelligence, with supposed 1 trillion parameter Gemini-based model, is provided for free, how many users would opt to keep paid a subscription? No doubt we would see yet another App Store for AI, if not a totally separate store for it.