Apple is going after artificial intelligence and social, but not in an optimal way

A pair of recent columns show that Apple (AAPL) is paying close attention to two of the largest consumer mobile software trends: The use of artificial intelligence to make apps and cloud services smarter and more powerful, and an explosion in social content-sharing, much of it via messaging apps. But the articles also show that Apple is addressing these trends in a way that accounts for other company interests, both for better and for worse. Tech site Backchannel has published an in-depth column that looks at Apple's growing investments in AI, and features remarks from software chief Craig Federighi, Internet software/services chief Eddy Cue and marketing/App Store chief Phil Schiller. It follows announcements at Apple's June developer's conference regarding the use of AI by iOS 10 (due to launch in September), and the company's recent purchase of Turi, a provider of software that developers can use to create AI-powered apps and services. Backchannel observes the Siri voice assistant has been using AI since 2014 to better understand user requests, and that Apple has also used machine learning -- a type of AI in which algorithms are trained to detect patterns, and get better at it as they take in more data -- to provide many other features and services. Examples include providing a list of apps a user is likely to open, identifying a caller who isn't in a user's contact book by analyzing e-mail data, selecting news stories, finding faces and locations in photos and figuring out whether an Apple Watch user is exercising.