I believe they are. At its core, Apple is a hardware company. They want to own the next platform that AI will be interacted through, not develop the killer app or inference distribution themselves. Their task for the next decade is to fight to be the dominant market player in whatever hardware becomes the iPhone of AI.

They are developing smart glasses for this purpose to compete with Meta, as well as other moonshots. No one is for sure what the platform will be; maybe it will just be the iPhone still, but my inclination at the moment is glasses. The only barrier to glasses is public resistance at this point-- but I don't see that preventing their rollout and eventual acceptance.

Additionally, it seems relevant to point out that they are the number one choice in consumer grade hardware for inference. So that is direct evidence of their seriousness and preparedness.

Apple has to take privacy more seriously than their competitors since they've marketed it as a competitive advantage. So they've focused more on in-device AI features than cloud-based models.

AI is something Apple has fallen behind on. I heard they are doing research on how to make AI that doesn't spy on you.

Apple and SpaceX in strategic partnership would accelerate AI at Steve Jobs and Elon Musk warp speed.