Did Apple have a 10-year head start in the AI race? Steve Jobs’ resurfaced interview clip fuels curiosity as tech giant plays catch up

A resurfaced interview clip of Steve Jobs has reignited curiousity about Apple’s place in the artificial intelligence race. In a 2011 conversation with veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg, Jobs dismissed the idea that Apple’s Siri acquisition was about search. Instead, he insisted Siri belonged squarely in the “AI area,” highlighting engineers, patents, and expertise in artificial intelligence as the company’s true interest.

The clip, now circulating widely online, suggests Jobs was eyeing AI’s potential long before today’s boom, which has been dominated by OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft.

Betting on AI Before It Was Buzz

Apple acquired Siri in 2010 for around $200 million. At the time, competitors were focused on search engines and mobile platforms, while Jobs was quietly betting on AI-driven interfaces that could reshape how humans interact with machines. “We like what they do a lot,” Jobs remarked, making it clear Apple had no ambition to compete in search but instead saw Siri’s AI-driven promise.

Jobs’ foresight resonates differently today, as Apple works to catch up with rivals in generative AI.

Apple’s Struggle to Reclaim Its Edge

Fast forward to 2025, and Apple finds itself accused of being late to the AI party. Rivals have surged ahead with chatbots and large language models while Apple scrambles to rebuild Siri from the ground up. According to a Bloomberg report, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, admitted earlier this year that the company’s hybrid approach to upgrading Siri failed. The decision was made to reset the assistant entirely with a new AI architecture, a move Apple now claims will allow it to leapfrog competitors.

Responsibility for Siri has since shifted to Mike Rockwell, the executive behind Vision Pro, with insiders crediting the change for “supercharging” Apple’s AI efforts.

Cook’s Message: Late but Impactful

At an all-hands meeting reported by Bloomberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook compared the rise of AI to seismic shifts like the internet and the smartphone. Acknowledging the company was not first, he reminded employees that Apple has a history of entering categories late but reshaping them dramatically. “There was a PC before the Mac, a smartphone before the iPhone, and many tablets before the iPad,” Cook told staff, framing delay as deliberate design. Apple’s strategy, he suggested, is not about speed but about impact—just as Jobs once implied when he framed Siri as the beginning of Apple’s AI journey.

Apple’s AI ambitions are also colliding with legal challenges. Elon Musk’s companies X and xAI have filed an antitrust lawsuit in Texas accusing Apple and OpenAI of unfairly partnering to dominate AI integration on iOS. The case, seeking billions in damages, could shape how AI tools are embedded into everyday devices.

A Race Jobs Saw Coming

Jobs’ brief but pointed remarks in 2011 now read as a quiet prediction. While Apple today faces criticism for lagging in generative AI, the resurfaced clip suggests the company’s late co-founder had already staked out the territory, years before it became the center of global tech rivalry.

The question now is whether Apple can convert that early vision into leadership—or whether its rivals will define the AI future Jobs once imagined.