Rumours

Apple’s “secret multimodal AI that will replace iPhones” rumour

Evaluating rumours that Apple is developing a multimodal AI system intended to replace the iPhone in future product lines.

AI Rumour Watch

— 2 min read

Claim: Apple is developing a multimodal AI system intended to replace the iPhone.

Verdict: False — no credible source supports a plan to replace Apple’s flagship product line with an AI device.

Every time Apple hires a machine learning engineer, the internet concludes that the company is about to launch an AGI-powered teleportation device. The latest rumour claims Apple has a “secret multimodal AI system” so advanced that it will “replace iPhones entirely next year.”

As usual, the evidence consists of an anonymous “insider,” a heavily compressed JPEG, and a great deal of imagination.

Let’s give this rumour the oxygen it deserves: none.

The Claim

According to the circulating posts:

  • Apple has developed a multimodal AI that runs locally
  • It outperforms GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and every known model
  • It can “anticipate user needs”
  • It is part of a “post-iPhone strategy”
  • Apple is preparing a “world-changing reveal” next year
  • And the company is deliberately hiding it to “avoid panic in the market”

Naturally, the claim comes from a screenshot with more compression artefacts than information.

The Source

The rumour originated from a Weibo post by an account that has previously “leaked”:

• iPhone 15 teleportation features
• Apple’s “quantum battery”
• MacBooks with built-in brain-computer interfaces
• And a “foldable iMac that fits in your pocket”

The screenshot used in this rumour:

• Uses the wrong font for internal Apple documents
• Contains a chart style never used in Apple’s ML papers
• Includes a category labelled “Machine Intuition”
• Mentions “Ambient Intelligence Levels”
• And features a watermark from an Apple fan page

A second version circulated on X, boosted by accounts who typically post a mix of wish-casting, fake leaks, and nostalgia for the days when iPhone boxes came with chargers.

Our Assessment

The facts:

• Apple does develop on-device multimodal models
• They have a large internal ML team working on Siri, Vision Pro, CoreML, and device intelligence
• None of their published research indicates anything close to AGI
• Apple has not demonstrated interest in replacing the iPhone — only evolving it
• A model capable of replacing all smartphone interaction would require orders of magnitude more compute than current devices have
• Apple’s secrecy culture does not involve leaking transformative technology through pixelated screenshots

The rumour’s internal logic collapses immediately: if Apple had built something that could replace the iPhone, they would not keep selling you iPhones.

The Signal

What Apple is doing:

• Building better on-device inference models
• Developing multimodal systems for Vision Pro and future headsets
• Integrating more predictive and generative intelligence across devices
• Expanding private-AI features
• Enhancing Siri
• Working on personalised and privacy-preserving assistants

What Apple is not doing:

• Preparing an AGI reveal
• Replacing the iPhone
• Hiding a market-shifting model for fun
• Developing “machine intuition levels”
• Deploying a model that outperforms trillion-parameter cloud systems on a battery-powered device

The real signal: Apple is catching up in AI — but quietly, methodically, and nowhere near the sci-fi fantasies of the rumour mill.

Verdict

Rumour Status: ❌ Mega-Hype Fiction
Confidence: 95%

Innovative? Yes.
iPhone-replacing AGI? No.
Not even close.

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