Apple makes major change that will frustrate customers | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

It’s hard to believe that a mere 18 years ago, the iPhone had yet to exist.

That thing billions of us are glued to in all our waking hours, rapid-fire replying to emails and scrolling social media endlessly, would have been an unimaginable piece of seemingly sci-fi tech in those days.

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But Apple debuted the very first iPhone in 2007 during Macworld, and in Steve Jobs’ hand, he held an object that would transform so many lives.

It also transformed Apple, turning it into one of the world’s most important tech companies — and making it an enormous amount of money.

While Apple has struggled recently with nailing the iPhone lineup in a way that pleases all its customers, it continues to make billions from the product — not too shabby close to 20 years after it first came out.

One thing that has investors feeling shaky about Apple right now, however, is the tech company’s lack of a solid AI plan. The tech company disappointed fans in June during WWDC when it failed to unveil anything.

Now, Apple is planning to use AI in a new part of its business, but the way it’s doing it could be controversial, putting customers in a position where they’ll struggle to get the service they need.

How Apple handles customer support

If your phone, laptop, tablet or other Apple device malfunctions, the solution is always a fairly simple one: make an appointment at your local Genius Bar.

Typically located in malls, the Genius Bar has been around since 2011 and has made Apple repairs much simpler.

When you go to a Genius Bar, you meet with an employee who listens to your issue, lets you know how it will be fixed and how much that will cost, and basically does their best to make the experience as frictionless as possible.

Not everyone may be near a Genius Bar location, and Apple has a solution for that, too: its Apple Support app. It acts as a resource for all your Apple products, helping you find repair facilities near you, connect with a Genius Bar employee, and more.

Now a change is coming to that app, and while it sounds good at first, it’s likely to have some inherent flaws.

The Support Assistant

A peek into Apple’s code reveals that the company is working on an AI-powered support assistant for the Apple Support app, per reporting from MacRumors.

Much like other chatbots on the market, this new feature would aid customers with problems that might otherwise have merited a trip to the Apple store to fix.

However, the problem with using chatbots in this instance is the same as every other instance: they can often be wrong.

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The Apple code acknowledges this, saying that generative models can sometimes provide “incorrect, misleading, incomplete, offensive, or harmful outputs,” and that customers should not rely on information from Support Assistant as a substitute for professional advice.

Talking to a human Apple employee, at least you know that person has trained in Apple’s ecosystem and understands how to fix your problem.

But the Support Assistant could steer you incorrectly, potentially causing more problems than you had in the first place — Apple even admits it can have “harmful outputs.”

While using chatbots to answer simple matters may be a perfectly fine way to address customer problems, this innovation seems as if it would make reaching a human being even harder than it already is.

On top of that, it may generate incorrect information, as many chatbots and LLM-driven products have reportedly often done.

That’s the last thing an already-overwhelmed consumer needs.