I’ve kept thinking that AI will not replace writers, but I was forgetting that the people who buy AI might. This week, for instance, ITV advertised for an executive who will be in charge of using generative AI to create content for film and TV.

If you’re thinking of applying, go for it. You’ll need to be able to type a line into ChatGPT every few weeks and probably ask it to also do you a PowerPoint presentation. I’m guessing at that last, but for the money they’re offering, you’ve surely got to do something.

Or possibly not.

The way AI works is that the last eleventy-billion people who have written the word “Merry” have followed it with the word “Christmas”. So if you write “Merry,” prepare to be shell-shocked over what exciting, original and profoundly artistic thing it proposes you do next. And yes, actually, my Mac did just suggest the word “Christmas” as I typed.

Apple, though. That’s another thing. It’s a thing which might have made me feel vindicated in my belief that AI will just become another tool we use. A thing that might have reassured me that no one would hire a typist and pay OpenAI a fee instead of a writer and a production company.

It’s that next week Apple is finally launching its Apple Intelligence, albeit only in the States. And what is great about it is that it is going to be totally boring. By design.

Where every other company is telling ITV, and anyone else willing to listen, that their AI will create hit dramas with the click of a button, Apple isn’t. Apple is very specifically placing this AI stuff inside its regular tools instead of flogging you a separate wondrous app.

I mean, it’s still trying to flog you iPhones, but.

In Apple’s case, you have to have written something before you can get AI to help in some way. Some way such as having AI make your text more friendly, more professional, or more concise. (The moment I heard that, I asked if you could push a button and make the text more threatening. And apparently now, yes, you can.)

I’ll never use any of that, I possibly won’t even use its AI grammar tools any more than I already pay attention to wavy red underlines, but the point is to have AI assist what you’re, not pretend to replace you.

Next week, Apple Intelligence will come out and it will be slammed. Does nothing. Ditchwater dull. But while ITV is off trying to tell OpenAI in court that no, the artificial intelligence software that created a hit TV show does not in fact have any ownership in it, Apple users will get on with writing.

If Apple can really provide us with tools that help, that will be nice. If other firms like Microsoft and Google copy Apple yet again, that will be fine.

But if Apple can make us bored of AI, that’s a result.

Now excuse me, please, I’m off to apply for a job at ITV.

Which pays £95,000 per annum.