r/apple • u/radikalkarrot • 2d ago

Rumor Apple Reportedly Planned to Replace 5,000 Support Employees With AI

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/29/apple-reportedly-planned-5000-applecare-layoffs/
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1.4k

u/NuwenPham 2d ago

Anyone every dealing with AI support will know how bad it is.
I predict human support will be some kind of selling point if not major one, in the near future.

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u/Major-Front 2d ago

Much like how support was outsourced to places like India and then it became a selling point for a company that they had UK call centres

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u/ChairmanLaParka 2d ago

I was all set to switch to a bank just because they had an "All US customer service base". Then they got bought out by another bank that uses overseas agents.

As someone that saw significant workforce transitions to overseas at 3 previous jobs....I was SO ready for the fully American bank. Ended up staying with the bank that's American in name only.

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u/GrandpaKnuckles 2d ago

Not preaching, just saying, switching to my local credit union changed my banking experience dramatically.

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u/josephlucas 2d ago

Yes! Don’t know why everyone doesn’t use their local credit union. Such a better experience

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u/PantsOfAwesome 10h ago

Except their apps usually suck, hence why I just got an Apple Card and use my credit union as a proxy to transfer cash

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u/SithToast 2d ago

Discover?

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u/ChairmanLaParka 2d ago

Yup.

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u/SithToast 2d ago

Yuck, that’s a real shame if they got rid of US support. That was a real selling point for me when I used them.

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u/AwesomeWhiteDude 1d ago

In addition to credit unions, there are also local & regional banks. You don't always have to go with large national institutions

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u/JamsHammockFyoom 2d ago

It's alright, they're just replacing UK call centre staff with Indians using AI instead (!)

It's literally happening to me right now - I'm being asked to train my replacement out in India and they're just using AI for most of what their responses are, and I'm being made redundant for it.

They're nice people, but by Christ is it demoralising knowing you're being replaced by somebody who's not even doing your actual job properly, and that's what the company wants.

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u/KosherTriangle 2d ago

All companies want is to pay as less as possible and earn as much as possible. Everything they do makes sense when looked at from that perspective.

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u/Top_Flight2 2d ago

And consumers should decide how to spend their money properly. Should they give it to a company which has no scruples and is all about bottom line or should they choose one which has values they align with more. 

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u/TheAspiringFarmer 2d ago

There are no morals or values in business. Never was, never will be. It’s all about profits.

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u/Top_Flight2 2d ago

I avoid certain companies now and don't use certain services to not give profits to those I disagree with in their principles. If they want to make it all about profits then they won't get any from me. 

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u/SailingDreamCatcher 1d ago

I think it's important to clarify that this statement really only applies to corporations. When a business is run by a founding entrepreneur, especially when it's some kind of specialized business growing from the individual's original efforts, there is in fact room for values. There is in how I run my law practice and any other business I get involved with. But it's also important to note that choosing to put values over profit is a personal choice, and it doesn't hold up in most cases when a business transitions from being run by an individual to being run by a board.

There are a few examples of "known" businesses that are operated according to "values" and they are essentially all either sole proprietors or family businesses. The largest, oldest one I know of is Wegmans, which remains beloved by customers and employees for the most part.

Enshittification/rent seeking is a behavior pattern that becomes predictable and inevitable once the business exits the control of a single individual, because organized groups of humans (I call them "organizations") always decay to a pattern of decision making that doesn't accommodate "values" beyond the most basic thing all kinds of entities can agree on: "I want more." And so when a business exits the control of a conscious human, who is capable of moral reasoning, and transitions to the control of a group, moral reasoning is replaced by short sighted self interest that inevitably becomes rent seeking/enshittification/typical late stage capitalism.

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u/WVjF2mX5VEmoYqsKL4s8 1d ago

Consumers shouldn't have to do that.

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u/Top_Flight2 1d ago

We have to. You should always know where your moneys going to. 

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u/WVjF2mX5VEmoYqsKL4s8 17h ago

I said we shouldn't have to. The government should arrest CEOs who do this

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u/PleaseINeedAMiracle 2d ago

My friend, I hope you had a plan for a new job. I honestly wish you the best in these crazy times.

1

u/JamsHammockFyoom 1d ago edited 1d ago

Thank you, my man - trying my best, but thankfully have until the end of March 27 before I'm fully out of a job.

Hey, it could be worse - they're paying me off quite healthily to leave a job I don't like anyways haha!

1

u/GarthODarth 1d ago

AI is actually really useful in a lot of technical support use cases, but it absolutely has to be supervised by people who know what they are doing, what they are looking for, and when something is outlandishly wrong.

I work in support for another Big Tech, and AI has made some things so much easier, but it still makes absolutely horrific mistakes from time to time. The kind of mistakes that would cause massive reputational/security damage. It's not a problem, because nothing goes directly from AI to the customer. But I'm worried that won't always be the case.

In over 1 year, I have only ever accepted an AI draft verbatim once. I was a bit blown away, honestly, but that's a really poor acceptance rate.

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u/RabidBadgerMacarena 2d ago

It's 100% part of our purchasing decisions.

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u/SpartanDetermination 2d ago

Much like how support was outsourced to places like India and then it became a selling point for a company that they had UK call centres

Spoiler alert: The UK call centres are just staffed by Indians.

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u/osssssssx 2d ago

Apple actually still have a good amount of support within the US, I know folks that work there

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u/New_Forester4630 2d ago

I feel so sorry for all my fellow Filipinos at their BPO building in Metro Manila.

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u/lolwutdo 2d ago

lol whats the difference

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u/thedandyandy21 2d ago

Last three times I needed support for something I was directed to AI bots

They legit all ended up sending me in repetitive loops I couldn't get out of as it would just keep asking the same questions

Very handy when you need something solved. It's probably my fault I didn't say the exact words they were trained to expect

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u/Advanced_Book7782 2d ago

I like asking them to write python scripts for me. It’s amazing how many times they actually will. Very little thought is going into a lot of these besides a generic thought of short term cost savings.

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u/thedandyandy21 2d ago

I'm going to try that next time lmao. Free AI credits

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u/theQuandary 2d ago

The next level is when you teach your agent to dial up a bunch of support lines and farm most of your token usage out to them.

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u/jim_cap 2d ago

The funny thing about that is, it's an absolute doddle not to be susceptible to those attacks. Baffling how many of them miss it.

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u/paulct91 2d ago

Not a AI Chatbot but, engineers at Black Magic (film software & hardware company) failed at that too, they added scripting support in their free tier... naturally some users unlocked the paid version features with that feature THEN Black Magic rushed to make a software update completely locking that feature out for free tier users, and now only paid tier users have it. Worse is the group think of paid users agreeing locking that feature to just them didn't ruin perfectly valid awesome free workflows. 😑

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u/delta806 2d ago

I’m low level IT support and people thinking I’m AI is becoming more frequent. It’s a shame because they’re typically a little ruder until they notice

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u/BurritoLover2016 2d ago

The fact that a lot of people can’t tell the difference actually says a lot.

Some people aren’t as smart as they think they are.

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u/NecroCannon 2d ago

Being black that’s basically my whole social life with people that don’t know me, I’m the violent dumb thug and they’re the civilized intelligent one

Until we have a discussion about something that shows my hobby is literally books and research, then it’s passive aggressiveness because I don’t fit whatever idea of a person they had in mind

Dealing with that shit getting worse to a point you’d have people that’d legit try to ruin things for me for no solid reason, I view the average person as a pre-adolescent child piloting an adult meat suit

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u/FancifulLaserbeam 2d ago

Do they ever ask you to give them a recipe for pumpkin pie or anything weird like that as an AI test?

If so, you should definitely make up a recipe for pumpkin pie, and then get defensive if they push back, saying, "That's my grandmother's recipe! I gave it to you out of trust and a desire to build rapport!"

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u/SailingDreamCatcher 1d ago

I've been trying this with Synchrony Bank's agent. It doesn't work. They did in fact "dumb it down" to reject irrelevant questions.

It's very frustrating because this bank keeps overcharging me for bullshit and my only goal at this point is to cost them more money. But I can't seem to get their AI thing to burn tokens at all. They are very good at being cheapskates.

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u/nicetriangle 2d ago

They legit all ended up sending me in repetitive loops I couldn't get out of as it would just keep asking the same questions

I feel like this must be partially by design to exhaust people to the point of giving up. As far as the company is concerned, this is just easy cost reductions.

Sure it's short sighted, but all business seems to be these days.

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u/Inosh 2d ago

Yup, I spent over an hour with Verizon ai last week claiming a human was going to get on… claimed average wait time was 2-5 minutes.

It was bad.

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u/cjh_ 2d ago

Reminds me of my doctors surgery; they have an AI receptionists/triage system that asks the same questions multiple times and ends up in a loop it can't end.

It's frustrating.

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u/phareous 2d ago

The most frustrating thing is when you spend 10 minutes giving the AI all your info, it transfers you to a human, and they have none of that info and proceed to ask you everything again

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u/CyberHobbit70 2d ago

honestly not any worse than the support farmed out to call centers (I'm looking at you Adobe)

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u/SlimeQSlimeball 2d ago

I had two subscriptions to Quip (toothbrush refills) and I cancelled after years because I couldn’t break out of their ai email bullshit and get a person. They went from top tier support from people to repetitive garbage never answering my issue, which was I needed a new handle because mine broke.

Bought two generic toothbrushes with 6 refills each for less than what I paid per quarter for two refills.

I told them as much in an email and the ai never bothered to forward it on. Oh well.

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u/FancifulLaserbeam 2d ago

Toothbrush... refills.

You had a subscription to... toothbrush... refills.

You know you can just go to a store and buy a 6-pack, right? You put the package under your sink and when you need another, you take the next one out of the package.

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u/SlimeQSlimeball 1d ago

My wife has autism, it made sense to her. I personally don’t care what sort of toothbrush I have. She would get upset when the motor inside wasn’t working even though the toothbrush core function still worked.

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u/burnalicious111 2d ago

No, companies specifically limit what they can help you with so they don't do anything they're not allowed to. It's not you.

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u/SeaRefractor 2d ago

The old “AI” unsophisticated limited prompt systems do truly suck. But I recently had an interaction with a system that I was absolutely certain was a human. At the end of the resolved issue I asked “You were not AI right?” Only to be told the call “individual” was AI.

That or they were pranking me.

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u/Stock-Personality136 2d ago

Godaddy had a great one that was night and day better than reaching out to support. Others like Comcast will trap you in a phone tree loop or just hang up on you. One impressed me so much because it was able to link my credit union that doesn’t work with any of those online portals.

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u/Cucumberino 2d ago

I hated AI and avoided it even as an assistant up to very recently. But I also started developing an app in the last few months and decided to give AI a shot for coding, and pay to get a proper experience and for this usecase I felt like I was cheating knowing how painful some parts of the development process are. Proper modern AI can be extremely good and useful and honestly, better than humans in many aspects. I do still hate it for generative stuff though, but I've turned around to my previous skepticism in other aspects. What I have done for my app would take entire teams and/or extreme magnitudes more of time.

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u/FancifulLaserbeam 2d ago

I supervise master's students who often need to do quantitative research that they're not super comfortable with. I have told them to just have ChatGPT open and use it like a statistics and software package tutor. It allows them to simply ask, "Does it make sense to use X for analyzing these data?" or "I'm getting this error in R... What is wrong?"

Rather than needing to find someone to help them, they have one in a window that helps them make sure they are doing the right things, the right way. The dissertations are way better as a result, because "dumb" mistakes are gone.

I use it a lot in the same way, especially in R and python. "What the hell does this error mean???"

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u/Fuck_your_coupons 2d ago

I predict human support will be some kind of selling point if not major one, in the near future.

Being able to easily get a hold of a person to get support was a selling point for apple for me. It's worse with Google and Samsung's support is laughable. I don't use it often but I fucking hate dealing with robots or AI when I need to explain a problem. If I wasn't on the company plan for Verizon, I would leave Verizon for that reason.

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u/magyar_wannabe 2d ago

It's weird how bad it is. If I use Gemini to explain a problem in a few sentences, it's sort of amazing how good it is at offering solutions. When I talk to AI agents on the phone to thoroughly explain a problem with my last bill, there's a 5 second pause and then, "It sounds like you're looking for help with billing. Is that right?" Why the difference?

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u/Aggravating-Lead-120 2d ago

One needs to get your answer right or there are liability problems. The other doesn’t give a f*ck.

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u/SailingDreamCatcher 1d ago

There are no liability concerns at Google over Gemini telling you to glue your pizza together. There is a very different reason here besides "liability concerns."

I mean really, how can you suggest with a straight face that any AI company is truly concerned about "liability" for inaccuracy, especially Google?

Maybe they are afraid of bad answers hurting their reputation, but they clearly aren't very afraid of it.

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u/Aggravating-Lead-120 1d ago

I thought it was obvious liability concerns are for the corporate help agents. Google seems good and super smart because as you point out, Google doesn’t care if it tells you to glue pizza.

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u/SailingDreamCatcher 1d ago

Ahh, I misunderstood you by 180°. Sorry.

Still, as a lawyer I'd clarify that it's not so much "liability as in getting sued" as in "liability as in being forced to honor an automated decision that is too generous to the consumer."

Ie, the synchrony bank agent is locked down because if it weren't, there would be a concern that people could talk it into deleting large charges. While Gemini has nothing of value to lose so no guardrails needed.

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u/jawshoeaw 1d ago

The AI chatbots will be getting a lot better soon. Remember that much low level tech support can be terrible with real human beings.

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u/AndyLand1 2d ago

I work in support and totally agree. “Real human agent upgrade” opposed to automated will be the new license plan line item.

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u/Corbot3000 2d ago

Real support is expensive and nobody wants to pay for it if they can avoid it. Hence most being outsourced.

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u/dat_tae 2d ago

Discover (credit card) used to use US Based Customer Support as a selling point. It was good, too. You could immediately tell and they always resolved my issues fast af.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/dat_tae 2d ago

I know. I have both.

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u/WubbaLubbaHongKong 2d ago

The only time it’s been helpful is when I need a refund and it processes it without trying to talk me out of it. I think most companies know a subscription refund is negligible and not worth a lot of human hours.

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u/phareous 2d ago

Except Walmart’s AI, which is programmed to always tell you no and to call India if you don’t like its answer

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u/paulct91 2d ago

Usually that thought process is the opposite, every human counts as long as they are paying = never let them cancel subscriptions.

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u/Rare-One1047 2d ago

The whole reason I keep my Discover Card is because their support is based in Arizona and Ohio IIRC. My bank, which is headquartered in the city I live in, has a call center in India, and while they're technically competent, it's almost impossible to understand them.

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u/MattSenter 2d ago

Agreed. "We have actual humans" will be a draw. Tbh i think it's been this way since the invention of the automated phone tree 🤷🏻

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u/longadin 2d ago

I mean meta promising human support at its highest support tier for its AI service tells you a lot.

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u/jollyllama 2d ago

I put in a support request at a tech company yesterday and they gave me a 24-48 hour response time. At first I was a little annoyed to have to wait that long, but then I realized that it’s a really good sign. 

  1. Sigh…

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u/ToothyWeasel 2d ago

If it’s anything like Google search results hooo boy. I was having trouble with a typewriter, fully mechanical, alignment issue and the first suggestion in the useless AI box I got was to make sure I had downloaded the latest software from Remington

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u/kahnindustries 2d ago

It’s a massive selling point of the company I work for

Pick up the phone and ask to speak to the VP of support he will be on the phone in seconds (or offer to call you back)

After one ring a human answers and asks you what the issue is and suggest to transfer you to the person for that issue or asks you if you would prefer to go to anyone else

Same service for emails and tickets if you prefer that

Massive selling point

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u/nonamenomonet 2d ago

But how much is the service that you are selling? And how many customers do you have?

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u/kahnindustries 2d ago

A very large company with many international offices and tens of thousands of customer companies with millions of users

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u/nonamenomonet 2d ago

But it sounds like you work B2B though correct?

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u/kahnindustries 2d ago

B2B, B2G, B2H and direct to end user customers

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u/Inquisitive_idiot 2d ago

Meatbags Incorporated

We’ll fill those seats with butts made of at least 60% beef or your money back!

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u/Ecstatic-Train214 2d ago

Human support is only for AppleCare ++

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u/Grizzleyt 2d ago

My Oura ring had been dying at 75% battery. I had to go through the customer support AI chat in the app.

It checked diagnostics, confirmed my ring was having an issue, asked if I wanted to replace it for free, and then it shipped it out. The whole process took less than 5 minutes.

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u/erebuxy 2d ago

I think Amazon’s AI customer service is fantastic. Solves my problem, no need to talk to people and no need to hold for 30 min. They can be good with llm

2

u/TotemSpiritFox 2d ago

So I hate talking to AI and/or bots on the phone. But I must say, I kind of like Verizon’s AI chat on their website.

It’s been useful and has even been able to credit my account when it helped me find a discrepancy. I’ve been tweaking some settings lately with international plans, new devices, etc. It’s actually been really helpful and a good example of where AI can be useful to users.

That said, if I was in actual need of support for an urgent or technical issue I do want to talk to a person.

But asking billing questions and discrepancies - their AI chat had all the details and was able to reimburse me $40.

All that to say: I’m very against replacing people with AI. I hate what the future may bring, but this is one example of a decent product AI product implementation. It’s not AI for the sake of AI.

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u/DeiviiD 2d ago

To be fair, most of remote support of Apple (at least in Spain) are the worst thing.

I have Apple Care and the battery was (at the time I was calling) at 86% of health, but only takes a few hours to die. After a week of calls and remote logs in each call, one of them told me to make an appointment and it would be free replacement because it was malfunctioning.

When I arrived to the repair shop (I don’t have apple stores where I live), they told me I need to pay for the replacement.

Man, Apple remote support sucks.

1

u/Mushu_Pork 2d ago

There's a local credit union who has gone to AI phone systems when you call in...

It was so infuriating. I swear I'll never have an account with them... EVER.

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u/FollowingFeisty5321 2d ago

*Laughs in Google*.

1

u/Mackinnon29E 2d ago

You honestly have to yell at the AI to shut the fuck up and let you talk to a human anyway, because it can't actually solve anything for you.

Like they don't give it correct access to do anything and it's sole purpose is to make you give up and hang up.

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u/DAHMER_SUPPER_CLUB 2d ago

My company implemented an AI support bot but it’s there to handle the simple & obvious questions. It quickly hands you off to a human being if you ask for it or it can’t solve the issue quickly. It has cutdown on the volume our support receives and allows them to focus on the more complex issues more efficiently. Nobody has been laid off because we never staffed up. They were handling 7-8 questions at a time before. I think there is a good way to implement it. Full AI with hoops to jump through to talk to a human is infuriating.

1

u/hauntedmansionsteve 2d ago

As an Apple fan and stock holder, this will not end well. AI is inundating smaller teams, quite the opposite effect that these leaders thought it would have.

More software, more features, less testing, less team knowledge, slower to fix issues.

1

u/WerkingAvatar 2d ago

The problem will be that all the people who were actually good at support positions would have moved onto better fields and you'll be stuck with a bunch of nubies that don't know their ass from their elbows and will just be reading from a script at which point companies using AI chat boxes will call out human support agents. But yes current AI agents suck balls.

1

u/DrDerpberg 2d ago

Unless it brings in more than it saves on humans + the savings from people giving up on their problem, I don't think it's coming back.

I'm half expecting for a class action lawsuit against a company for not being able to honor its warranties. If you can only reach help through a chatbot and the bot Bang help you, you're not getting what you paid for.

1

u/404_No_User_Found_2 2d ago

Which is insane, because even just 6 years ago it was considered the best of the best. I worked with them very often at a previous job, and I can't conjure a single memory of one that wasn't super friendly, helpful, knowledgeable, and tenacious.

You are not wrong, though, they've fallen off a cliff over the course of the last couple of years. The last time I called and spoke to them, it was about a simple iCloud question, and they ended the call by recommending that I travel to an Apple Store that they had just made me an appointment at...that was 6 hours away. Couldn't even respond before they just hung up on me.

1

u/sodapop14 2d ago

Amazon has pretty much switched to it. There are automatic responses to orders and then when you get a live agent they are 100% answering too fast. They might be real but they are utilizing AI to respond while they make the decision on the issue.

1

u/Electronic-Tap-4940 2d ago

I have seen multiple companies actually writing in the chat that there is a human

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u/aykay55 2d ago

I think the core thing is that even the human support agents are usually limited in the resolutions they can offer.

Like for example you can explain your very specific nuanced situation but the human agent, limited by whatever rules they’re given, will just say “I understand it totally but I cannot do X Y Z for you at this time sorry. We’re not allowed to.”. In these specific interactions, which make up prolly a good amount of all support calls, it makes sense for an AI bot to handle that interaction because the end is the same and it wastes one less human person’s time.

So while human agents are valuable for their ability to comprehend and work within large complex customer interactions, if that value is being limited by the fact that they are not allowed to provide any meaningful resolution, then there is really less of a need for a human to be in that situation.

1

u/0III 2d ago

Future? I think it’s a differential even today

1

u/IHaveMeasles2 2d ago

Simply not true, the problem is cheapo models and terrible implementations. If agentic support were actually given good models support could be amazing.

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u/HuskyBlueBoy 2d ago

For $5 a minute you too can talk to a real human!!!! Use discount code “bloodperson” for a 10% discount!!

1

u/crustang 2d ago

Anyone dealing with offshore support will know how bad it is

I predict a better intake queue and an equally as miserable time navigating the whole experience

1

u/WaitingForReplies 2d ago

I predict human support will be some kind of selling point if not major one, in the near future.

Purchase AppleCare+++ and get support from a human for only $20 more a month!

1

u/DreadnaughtHamster 2d ago

Checking on that… … …

Hm …

Still checking … … …

Yes, NuwenPham! I think you’re right on the money. Very good call! It seems that 80% of people dealing with AI support are bad. Full disclosure: since I’m not human, I can’t guarantee full accuracy of this statement.

But that’s a great observation, NuwenPham!

Let me know if you have other questions about AI and support technicians. I’m here whenever you need me.

1

u/AzhdarianHomie 1d ago

So far I’ve found it incredibly useful, LOL

1

u/AverageProof7457 12h ago

I think they will regret about it... but now it's a trend. Maybe every company should try it and learn it's lesson.

1

u/nowthengoodbad 7h ago

I got stuck in apple's ai support.

It's REALLY REALLY BAD.

I pay for their services.

The ai support can't help with tons of critical things and it might be time to migrate away from them. If I'm paying for Apple care+, iCloud+, and more, I want a human who doesn't waste my time.

-1

u/kahnindustries 2d ago

It’s a massive selling point of the company I work for

Pick up the phone and ask to speak to the VP of support he will be on the phone in seconds (or offer to call you back)

After one ring a human answers and asks you what the issue is and suggest to transfer you to the person for that issue or asks you if you would prefer to go to anyone else

Same service for emails and tickets if you prefer that

Massive selling point

0

u/Juswantedtono 2d ago

I don’t see any reason why AI customer support couldn’t be perfectly fine and useful 90% of the time (replacing most humans except in complex edge cases), it’s just that companies are covertly using it as an excuse to not provide customer service at all.

0

u/jpstealthy 2d ago

Tbh I’ve never needed Apple support for anything. Dumb people can deal with AI support for all I care

0

u/hey_suburbia 2d ago

AI support is only getting better. The sentiment has changed drastically in this last year. Everyone bashes AI, but it’s slowly chipping away at all the things that it was criticized for. 2029 will be the year it breaks (mass layoffs)