The part about not gaining much is questionable.

“AI” is a semi-meaningless misnomer, of course, but e.g. a natural language interface is something Apple had tried since forever (Siri) and always failed to get functional and useful. So this part of “not gaining much” is probably false.

Paired with every vendor’s love to tweak things at random - including Apple, a natural language (if done right) could be a meaningful solution to UI consistency (“Hey Siri, I dunno where the goddamn toggle is located this time but stop making music auto-play every other time phone connects to CarPlay” - real use case with real value). Yet, as usual, Siri lacks in intelligence and capabilities.

I’m pretty sure it’s not some genius wisdom of Tim, or whoever. Apple simply didn’t do any user-facing useful shit (they did some interesting stuff for developers, but that’s a different story), plastered some generative emojis to tick the “AI” checkbox, and now people praise them for that.