Following this week's announcements about new generative artificial intelligence projects from OpenAI and Google, all eyes in the industry are on Apple. Tim Cook, the company's CEO, just announced that the company will soon go public as it takes the next step in the new field of open AI, which recently exploded with the introduction of ChatGPT. . It will take place on June 10th at the opening ceremony of the annual Worldwide Developers Conference, where new features of iOS 18, the latest iPhone operating system, will be announced. Despite the general lack of details, multiple rumors have been circulating over the past few weeks about potential directions the tech giant could take.
Analysts say Apple's entry into the generative AI race is not aimed at directly competing with OpenAI or Google, but rather that the iPhone maker's choice of one would improve the current relationship between the two. There seems to be a consensus that relationships can be broken. Chatbots and other AI services. According to the latest leaks, Apple may be about to sign a deal to integrate his ChatGPT into the iPhone. However, the same source notes that negotiations with Google about the use of Gemini technology are still ongoing. For both competing companies, giving such privileged access to the more than 1 billion iPhone users will be a key goal in the fierce competition.
Since the first iPhone was released in 2007, Google has paid Apple a significant amount of money ($20 billion in 2022 alone) to have its search engine as the default on its phones. It's still unclear whether Apple will choose OpenAI or Google, or to what extent it will integrate AI capabilities, but leading analysts familiar with the company's policy say Apple will enter into different types of contracts than search engines. I think it will lean towards.
So instead of setting ChatGPT or Gemini chatbot as the default on your iPhone, the deal could include using that technology.according to bloombergMark Garman: “The two companies are in active negotiations to license Apple's Gemini, Google's set of generative AI models, to power several new features coming to iPhone software this year. ” in his daily newsletter. strategy, Ben Thompson writes that he believes Google has a better infrastructure than OpenAI to manage the avalanche of traffic and data processing required for iOS integration. .Meanwhile, John Gruber has a blog focused on technology. bold fireball“We also see Apple treating multiple AI providers like white-label providers, negotiating contracts for their use behind the scenes while presenting features to users under the Siri brand.”
Much of the excitement about Apple's next move focuses on what could be a dramatic overhaul to make its Siri voice assistant truly intelligent. Since its debut in 2011, the day before Steve Jobs' death, Siri has had few significant updates, and while it can solve simple tasks such as calling a contact from the phonebook, its voice recognition system It is still tolerant of other requests such as playing specific audio. songs or albums. Google's Assistant and Amazon's Alexa surpassed Siri several years ago and are considered more efficient and intelligent.
The collapse of Siri
The arrival of ChatGPT in 2022, with its incredible ability to listen to, respond to, and even chat with users, further explains why Apple is lagging behind its competitors when it comes to voice-activated assistants. It became clear.And this week's demonstration of OpenAI's new voice conversation mode is reminiscent of the movie she Siri's ability to tell stories on any subject you request, add your own dramatic twists, and perform in multiple languages sends Siri straight into the forgotten toy box.
If Apple chooses to use ChatGPT or Gemini to directly interact with iPhone users and respond to their requests, it will be the end of Siri. And Apple will lose significant control over privacy, which has been one of the company's big stories in recent years. In the face of the general sentiment that Apple is being left behind in the field of artificial intelligence, Cook declared in a recent quarterly presentation: and services integration, breakthrough Apple Silicon with the industry-leading Neural Engine, and an unwavering focus on privacy that underpins everything we create. ”
says John Gruber, who has a long history of accurately predicting Apple's new announcements. [which are driven by generative AI] Compared to services like ChatGPT, which leverage the vast processing power of cloud server farms, it leverages the power of its own processors and maintains full control over your privacy, directing processing to your own devices. And it seems. Apple may choose to create relatively simple AI mechanisms for the iPhone in iOS 18 software, which debuts in September. They will manage sensitive information such as summarizing voice messages and composing replies to emails, in line with what Samsung is already building into its latest phones.
Apple privacy and proprietary chips
Compared to its competitors, Apple has a distinct advantage in that it manufactures its own processors for phones, tablets, and computers. Last year, the company surprised the tech world with the speed of its evolution. In just six months, the company has gone from launching his M3 processor for his MacBook Pro to debuting his new M4 generation for the new iPad Pro, which has just been released. Since 2017, Apple has been building neural cores into its processors that are dedicated solely to performing artificial intelligence tasks on its devices. The latest leak indicates that the tech giant is preparing these chips for use in its cloud servers.
“We remain very bullish about our opportunity in generative AI. We are making significant investments and look forward to sharing some very exciting things with our customers in the near future,” said Cook. added in a recent speech to analysts and investors. The company won't make its plans public until Apple kicks off its annual conference with app developers for its devices with a June 10 presentation. And beyond the leaks, you wouldn't be able to infer many specific details from the AI acquisitions the company has made over the past year or the scientific papers it has published about language models. Both are considered by experts to be relatively unrelated.
This is far from a big announcement, but the one thing Apple did let slip is that it wants to make a big move into a hot new field. “We're spending a lot of time and effort on artificial intelligence,” Cook told investors in February. Since then, his marketing team has struggled to highlight the capabilities of their devices in that space, with difficult-to-substantiate statements such as “Customers love the incredible AI performance of the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models.” I came up with a claim.
While we wait for real details on how Apple will deliver on its promised entry into the generative AI race, the company has announced a major launch in the space following the cancellation of a multibillion-dollar project. It certainly seems to have the necessary resources to develop self-driving cars and its recent completion of Vision Pro, its first mixed reality glasses. AI is a marathon, not a sprint, and it's still in its infancy with things like the new ChatGPT voice assistant and the recently announced Google AI search engine update. But these projects demonstrate what is at stake when creating AI. A new way to interact with your computer, phone, and tablet.
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