Apple reportedly slashes employee AI usage limits amid ‘cost-cutting effort’
Macworld ·
Macworld Apple took its time jumping on the AI bandwagon, announcing Apple Intelligence as late as 2024 (nearly three and a half years after the release of DALL-E, and one and a half after ChatGPT) then delaying some of the platform’s flagship features for years after that. But these days the company is a committed proponent of “truly helpful AI that’s centered around you and your needs,” as it writes on the dedicated Apple Intelligence page on its website. Product pages for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo extol their ability to handle AI workloads, and similar language is used to market the iMac, iPad mini, Apple Watch Series 12, HomeView, and pretty much every other product Apple sells. Former CEO Tim Cook said AI is critical to Apple’s products back in 2023 , while new boss John Ternus told Wired last month that the company is “absolutely going to leverage AI” to build incredible products. However, as much as it encourages customers to enjoy the benefits of AI, Apple has seemingly soured on excessive use of the technology by its own employees. In a new report, Bloomberg claims the company has begun “reducing employee budgets for artificial intelligence usage as part of a cost-cutting effort.” Citing anonymous people with knowledge of the change, leaker Mark Gurman says Apple last month reduced the daily AI spending cap for some engineers from $300 to $200, and is planning to make further cuts which could see limits drop as low as $100. “Many groups outside of engineering already face a $100 daily cap, but Apple has considered reducing that limit to as little as $25 for some teams,” Gurman adds. Staff who believe these limits will impede their ability to do their job can ask for an exemption. The spending limits relate to the tokens used by AI providers to track the volume and nature of usage, and to set fees. Complex, data-intensive tasks such as debugging code may cost more tokens than the lighter usage typical among consumers. Some Apple employees will therefore need to be more conservative in the data-processing demands they place on AI. But others, apparently, won’t need to change anything about their approach. Gurman’s sources claim that “few workers were using their full $300 daily allowances, making the previous limits unnecessarily generous,” which suggests the savings obtained through the measure will be small. Aside from those public comments praising the usefulness of AI, this is a surprising stance from a company which in its most recent financial disclosure announced its “best fiscal year ever.” But Apple has long been a company obsessed with spotting and eliminating unnecessary costs, with Cook (who came from an operations background) famous for his ability to optimise a supply chain. Last month’s initial AI spending cut, while it happened on Ternus’s watch, may have been a decision made, or at least floated, while Cook was still in charge. But the plan to cut deeper shows that Ternus is just as keen as his predecessor on running an efficient company. And after all, as he said in the Wired interview linked above, “We don’t want to ship AI for AI’s sake. When we’re doing it right, people won’t have to think about whether it was AI that made this happen or more traditional software. What matters is, did we build something that they really love?”