Apple’s announcement of Apple Intelligence marks the era of “AI copilots by default,” rounding out earlier offerings from Microsoft and Google. What are the implications for GTM teams?

Simply having access to ChatGPT alone won’t be enough to compete. The baseline for worker productivity will continue to increase, as we enter the era of “AI copilots by default.” According to Microsoft, 75% of workers already use AI at work, with 78% of them “bringing their own.” If Apple Intelligence can’t help you, it’ll extend to ChatGPT directly.

GTM staff will come to expect their companies to provide AI tools with greater ease of use, akin to Apple Intelligence’s context awareness, memory, and knowledge retrieval. Like its rivals, Apple Intelligence is fine-tuned to the App and the task, automatically gathering relevant context from your email, texts, and other documents. The company claims superior user satisfaction scores.

GTM teams’ need and demand for undifferentiated AI “point solutions” will continue to erode, as Apple Intelligence appears by default across devices. For example, Apple’s AI will assist users in composition, summarization, proofreading, and other general copilot tasks. If you’re using an AI co-writer for general copywriting, do you get enough benefit from other features to warrant the cost? If you’re not using an AI co-writer, are you even motivated to search for one if your employees already use Apple Intelligence? Furthermore, “non-AI” App developers can offer specialized Apple Intelligence use cases using the SDK and intent.

We might see the open and response rates of direct Marketing and Sales communications continue to decline, as AI copilots help users prioritize their inboxes. Apple Intelligence will also summarize email descriptions, instead of allowing senders to “dictate the snippet.”

GTM leaders need to offer at least basic AI governance and training. Will they allow workers to use Apple Intelligence? Maybe so, even if there had been privacy concerns with prior offerings: Apple AI avoids data storage and model training by offering on-device and private cloud compute. If a GTM team will allow it, they need to give workers a boost by training them on prompts and use cases.

In my AI in GTM research, I’ve already moved beyond general prompt and use case coaching to instead focus on scaled AI implementations. With big tech (GTM or not), adding copilots to their systems, many more GTM teams will naturally benefit from “odds and ends productivity gains” offered by generalist copilots. For software GTM teams, true competitive advantage will come from scaling processes and systems that are tailored to their specific GTM operation.

Apple Intelligence will enter beta, for free, in the fall.