Apple has reportedly created its own generative AI tools to rival products from OpenAI and Google but is yet to decide when to release the technology to consumers.
The Cupertino-based company has built its own foundation, known as Ajax, to create large language models, and is testing a chatbot dubbed by some engineers as “Apple GPT,” Bloomberg News reported, citing its sources.
John Giannandrea, the company’s head of machine learning and AI, and Craig Federighi, its top software engineering executive, are leading the efforts, but Apple is yet to devise a strategy for releasing the technology to consumers, the report said.
The obvious choice would be integrating the technology inside its voice assistant Siri, which, despite launching before rival products in 2011, has stagnated over Apple’s focus on privacy.
While the company has pushed advanced AI in other areas, including Apple Photos, texting, and mixed-reality headset Vision Pro, it’s seen as lagging behind competitors due to its conservative approach to the technology.
Still, the news that it was working on a chatbot has seen the company’s shares gain more than 2%, sending them to record highs. Shares of Microsoft, Nvidia, and Google’s parent company Alphabet have dropped more than 1%.
While Apple doesn’t have a concrete plan on the release of its AI products, people with knowledge of the matter have said that the company is aiming to make a “significant” AI announcement next year, according to the Bloomberg report.
Its sources also said that the chatbot was created as an experiment late last year and works as a web application, essentially replicating ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing.
Initially halted over security concerns about generative AI, it has since been extended to more employees to use internally for product prototyping. It can also summarize text and answer questions based on the data it has been trained with, the report said.
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