AI adoption depends on trust as much as technology, and few companies command more consumer trust than Apple. As AI assistants move from answering questions to making decisions and taking actions, that advantage could reshape local search and customer discovery.
After two years of delayed action and lots of flak from the tech press, Apple recently made good on its AI promises. As we examined in our WWDC coverage last month, the company has finally rolled out the new AI-infused Siri, as well as an Apple Intelligence layer that stretches across its devices and apps.
Many questions flow from there, including what we can expect from Apple’s AI infusions. Will they be any good, or will they continue Siri’s tradition of underwhelming and disappointing performance? One could argue that Siri was given the best positioning of any product in tech history… which it squandered.
But with a Gemini brain transplant – which we predicted a few years ago – Siri may finally become useful and live up to modern standards of AI assistants. If it can do that, the impact could be staggering, based solely on Apple’s installed base. Functional AI will suddenly be at the fingertips of billions of global users.
“AI adoption will ultimately be driven by three things: distribution, trust, and usefulness in everyday moments,” Uberall EVP of Global Partnerships, Lex ten Veen told Localogy Insider. “Apple already has one of the strongest distribution positions in consumer technology by sitting in everyone’s pocket.”
Trustworthy Endorsement.
All of this falls into a typical pattern, which we’ve been saying all along: Apple always moves slowly and carefully into new markets. But then once it does enter, it executes well, and steamrolls everyone (see iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, etc.). In the end, it doesn’t matter that they entered late.
“I think Apple being late to AI matters less than many assume,” said ten Veen. “Apple has historically been extremely selective about when it enters a category and has built a reputation for operating with a high degree of secrecy and launching when it believes the consumer experience is ready. That has helped it stay ahead in some categories and rapidly close gaps in others.”
But the other factor at play was teased above by Ten Veen: privacy. Apple has intelligently positioned itself as the privacy-first player. And it’s not just marketing vapor: Apple has backed up its claims and walked the walk. Moreover, it doesn’t have inherent conflicts, so its privacy claims are credible.
In other words, when Apple says it has no interest in farming users’ data, we believe it. That’s because it doesn’t need user data to fuel its core business: selling hardware. The same can’t be said for Meta, Google, or anyone with an ad-centric core business. Their privacy claims will always be in question.
Why is this important? AI is a technology inherently plagued by trust issues. Not only is it responsible for job losses, which strips away favorability, but it continues to show an inability to consistently and reliably deliver truthfulness. So it needs a trustworthy endorsement. And that cosign could come from Apple.
“Apple’s privacy-first positioning gives it a level of trust that could become increasingly relevant,” said Lex, “as AI moves from answering questions to making decisions and taking actions.”
New Rules
“Taking action” brings us to AI’s next phase: agents that autonomously work on our behalf – sort of like Google’s “information agents,” that we recently covered. Trust is one thing when you’re asking for answers from an AI engine… It’s a different matter when it’s out there transacting on your behalf.
And that’s how all the above traces back to the Localogyverse. AI’s infusions across Siri – and Apple’s broader surface area – have implications for how we’ll find things to see, buy, do, or eat in our local communities (or while travelling). That includes finding everything from restaurants to roofers.
This brings in a few vectors in AI’s evolution. It factors in the quickly-changing playbook for online visibility, given the differing ways that AI engines surface content. It also brings in the above agentic evolution from answers to action. AI will become increasingly trusted to find and buy things for users.
That trust factor will take a while and happen through acclimation, as it often does with emerging tech. Apple could accelerate that trust-building process for all the reasons noted above. And its impact in doing so will be amplified by the size of its installed base, and the new commercial layer to Apple Maps.
As that plays out, there’s a hot take that SEO is dead – and local search platforms with it. Though that could be true for some, a shifting environment will compel companies that help SMBs navigate the new rules. In other words, when looking at the Uberalls of the world, they’ll be in greater demand than ever.
“From a local perspective, this becomes especially interesting,” said Lex ten Veen. “Discovery is gradually shifting from search toward recommendation and execution. If AI becomes the interface and Maps becomes a ‘commercial’ discovery layer, businesses will increasingly need to optimize not only to be found, but to be selected.”
Header image credit: Michail Sapiton on Unsplash
