Every significant tech corporation has recently entered the generative AI arena in an effort to cash in on the current craze and establish its position in this rapidly developing industry. That is, all save one significant tech company: Apple. The IT juggernaut has notably shied away from the AI weapons race thus far, but that may soon change. According to a recent Bloomberg article, Apple is developing its own internal big language models and plans to enter the fray shortly. Even an AI chatbot called AppleGPT, according to its staff, is being tested.
According to a recent Bloomberg story on Apple’s internal operations, the corporation is now working on a set of AI tools in an effort to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is currently the rage in the field of generative artificial intelligence. It’s very well-liked. Microsoft has made a $10 billion investment in the business, integrating its AI capabilities into Bing search and getting ready to include it in Windows 11 with a feature called Windows Copilot. Bard, a chatbot created by Google, and Meta’s announcement that AI features for its platforms are its major current investment. Voicebox, a tool for AI-generated audio, is one of Meta’s many open-source generative AI products.
According to the article, Apple has developed a foundation for creating new, expansive language models that it might implement throughout its libraries of hardware and software. The initiative is known as Ajax, and the article claims that while Apple has the resources to develop a wide range of new AI-based technologies, it is unsure of how to organize them into meaningful services for its users. It has already developed a number of substantial language models and has built a chatbot of its own to compete with Bard and ChatGPT. The company’s voice-activated assistant Siri, which has long been the target of online jokes due to its inability to carry out simple tasks, is the latest edition of this.
As privacy is a component of the Apple brand, the company’s inability to manage privacy with any AI-based system is another sticking point. A technology like ChatGPT may retrieve material from the web and then re-display it in response to user requests. A discussion over copyright protections for information scanned by AI systems has been initiated as a result of this, which has led to at least one lawsuit. Apple is threatening to stop offering iMessage and FaceTime in the UK if regulators change the law to require it to turn up user data without a hearing or the chance to challenge the decision because it takes privacy seriously enough.
According to earlier rumors, Apple was testing “natural language generation” to make Siri better. However, the business has ambitions that go beyond just giving its ailing helper a basic makeover. When he pointed out the tsunami of AI services saturating the market in May, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed the business’s ambitions, saying the company will ultimately use them but only in a “thoughtful” manner.
