Apple’s AI reality check and Adobe’s free video generator

Welcome to ZDNET’s Innovation Index, which identifies the most innovative tech developments from the past week and ranks the top four based on the votes of our panel of editors and experts. Our mission is to help you identify the trends that will have the greatest impact on the future.

Leading the index this week is Apple, releasing research that confirms what we may have already suspected: AI models can’t really reason (for now), only match patterns. The company completed the research with GSM-Symbolic, its new benchmark data set that “overcomes the limitations” of OpenAI’s open source equivalent GSM8K and tests LLM’s reasoning, explained ZDNET’s David Gewirtz. Apple’s solution asks a model more complex questions and reveals weaker reasoning skills because it can’t get by with simple answers stored in its training data. This approach provides a credible reality check to the AI ​​hype, even if the conclusion is not new. Just because a machine can process patterns exponentially faster than us doesn’t mean it thinks.

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Gewirtz acknowledges that Apple’s motivations here may go beyond a love of science, calling the paper a potential “super-nerd competition comparison” against OpenAI. Regardless, the findings confirm suspicions about AIs despite major swings in direction: Autonomous and agentic systems are all the rage, and 95% of professionals surveyed say they would let an AI avatar act for them during a meeting. Maybe we should manage expectations.

In second place is Adobe, which launched its AI video generator before the competition – and for free. At Adobe Max this week, the company introduced the Firefly Video Model in public beta, beating OpenAI’s highly anticipated Sora, Google’s Veo and Meta’s MovieGen, although press was comparatively quieter in the run-up to the release. With Firefly Video now free and accessible, it could gain a significant lead as generative AI video tools become more widely used, not to mention a healthy trial period as the competition catches up.

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In third place are passkeys, which quickly make passwords obsolete. The FIDO Alliance has made progress in increasing the security of passkeys compared to passwords. The results include increased use of passkeys, less phishing and fewer reused credentials (guilty), resulting in faster logins, explained Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, senior contributing editor at ZDNET. Among other industry trends, this advancement could mean big changes in password management and better privacy options for users (bye, SMS OTP prompts).

Finally, this week Apple announced the unthinkable: making an expensive product cheaper. With Meta’s cheaper VR products in review, the company is reportedly toying with four new alternatives to its pricey Vision Pro (which starts at $3,500, also known as a two-week New York rental). If the price drop trend continues – and other companies join in – AR and VR wearables could actually become more common. Maybe we’ll have all-hands meetings in the metaverse after all.