Last month I made the courageous promise that I would eat an AirPod if a 9to5Mac writer's prediction that "[b]efore the end of the year, I have no doubt Apple’s AI features—especially what’s coming in 18.2—will become more mainstream than any other existing AI product,” came to pass.

This week SellCell has some survey data from iPhone customers about how they're liking those new AI features, and gang, the results aren't spectacular. You should click through to see all the data they've gathered, but some high level points that stood out to me were:

• 73% of iPhone users were unsatisfied with iOS's AI features
• 11% of iPhone owners said they would pay a subscription for AI features compared to 4% of Samsung owners, once again showing why iPhone customers are a more desirable and your apps simply must run there
• 41% of iPhone users said they have used at least one of the Apple Intelligence features once or more (47% of Samsung users said they had used Samsung AI)
• Writing tools were by far the most used feature, with 72% of iPhone users saying they've used it at least once
• 11% of iPhone users said AI features were "very valuable", while 80% said they were "not very valuable" or "no value"
• As to why people aren't using the AI features, the top 2 answers were 57% said because they hadn't even updated to the latest OS yet and 36% said they didn't find them useful

I think AI features have a long tail and there are great uses for them, but nothing I've seen from people in my life nor the data in this survey indicates to me that Apple Intelligence is anywhere close to usurping ChatGPT in use by January 1.

Also, the tough part about potentially needing to eat an AirPod is that I need AirPods day to day, so after I ate it I'd need to spend $200+ on new ones. A true one-two punch I'm glad I won't have to exercise.