Apple is reportedly planning a big AI-focused M4 Mac upgrade

I mean that depends? Does it actually work? Does it record all my data constantly and send it to Apple in a continuous stream, or is it fully local? will it actually provide some useful service like better search, will it be able to bootstrap projects for me? Learn my workflow patterns and assist by preparing stuff preemptively, or make intelligent suggestions on how to improve efficiency? Can it attempt to organize my awful, trash filing system of pictures, movies, half-started projects into something less painful to look at? Can it help my computer get out of my way when I don’t feel like being all computery (which I love but sometimes it shouldn’t be the focus)? Can it do these things well and without leaking them to some cloud?

Because that’s what we’ve been trying to make computers do since the PC first came along and I’d fuckin pay for that.

EDIT: to more directly answer your question, no one wants SaaS AIs by the FANG because they’re labor-replacement machines aimed at the ultimate grift; extracting capital out of the capitalists at the expense of the everyday workers. But that doesn’t mean that every AI is a speculative language model trained on the stolen data of all humanity to be used as a tool for class warfare; if they can create a neural net that can focus on other things besides language (or hell? Even language) that runs locally- if they can eat Microsoft’s lunch and create an actual co-pilot; they’d charge a premium as they always do but if it works well enough, it might be worth it.

Doesn't matter what customers want, it's the shareholders.

They want tools that do things and toys that are fun. So maybe. It depends on what Apple will use it for. I enjoy being able to search my photos even though I never tagged them. That’s a useful kind of AI. I like how I can automatically select the subject of a photo so I can place it on other backgrounds also.

Do the majority of users really want AI in their computers?

What this could mean is the ability to replace (or upgrade) something like Siri into a model that runs locally on your machine. This means that it wouldn't need to route your questions/requests through someone else's computer (the cloud). You wouldn't even need to connect the computer to the internet and you would still be able to work with that model.

Besides, there are many companies that don't want you to pass on their internal documents to companies like OpenAI (ChatGPT). With locally run models, there aren't any problems with this as that data will not be uploaded anywhere.