Apple engineers allegedly testing AI-generated language features
With ChatGPT growing ever more popular, Apple has reportedly decided to step up its game and focus on natural-language search processing.
Siri
In February, Apple held its annual AI summit, an internal event that briefs employees on its Machine Learning and AI advancements.
The event was somewhat more subdued than expected and was most noteworthy for being the first in-person event that Apple had held in years.
However, the New York Times spoke to those familiar with the event, which seemingly offered more insight. According to the sources, engineers -- including those said to be from Apple's Siri team -- are actively testing language-generating concepts.
Generative language would be a massive undertaking for Apple. Currently, Siri needs to be fed a prompt that already exists inside its database. So, if a user asks Siri a question that hasn't already been integrated into its code, it responds that it cannot help the user.
John Burkey, a former Apple engineer, told the New York Times that upgrading Siri's data set required engineers to rebuild the entire database -- a task that could take up to six weeks. He believes that adding more complex features could take a year and doesn't believe that Siri would ever become a creative assistant like ChatGPT.
More broadly, the New York Times discusses how tech companies are now expected to keep up with ChatGPT, with major players like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft rushing to integrate chatbot features into their products.
Microsoft has already begun testing its ChatGPT features, which have been integrated into its Bing & Edge products.
Google is bringing AI tools to users in Google Workspace and opening up its AI language model called PaLM for developers and businesses.
It's unlikely that generative language is going away anytime soon. On Tuesday, OpenAI released GPT-4, an upgraded language model for ChatGPT that is more accurate than its predecessors.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Having said that, I installed Bing on Mac to try out GPT on Bing, and let me tell ya, Edge is basically spyware. It tries to force you to run three background tasks even after you uninstall it. I had to manually delete over 5 hidden files and force quit the continuous their app that continuously requests to reactivate the tasks and would not allow you to quit it, all that just to remove that damned Edge spyware crap!
What this means is, even if Apple replaced Siri with ChatGPT, so long as the ridiculous limitations are still imposed, it would be just as frustrating to use as it is now. I want the power to command Siri to do just about anything I myself can do on my iPhone, iPad or Mac. That includes changing settings. Anything less is a vastly inferior product that I will almost never use and will complain about until the end of time in forums like this one.
Apple, the ball is in your court.
I assume we will here much more at WWDC with Apple really pushing the interfaces as options for all developers. Maybe even a iCloudAPI that creates a user private trained model that is shared between apps.
Apple has a lot of money, so if apple wants to catch up, they will.
Microsoft on the other hand is operating more from desperation. Despite efforts to use the Windows 11 processes to either fool or pressure users into opting for the Bing search engine along with other MS first-party services like Photos, and Cloud, they had been largely unsuccessful. Rolling out a less-considered and careful ChatGPT integration was a result of that, hoping that it might give them an "EDGE" (!) and garner positive public impressions. Some early media tests caused that to explode in their face and a fast backtrack.
They did succeed tho in forcing Google's hand into making market decisions they would have preferred to put off until all the safety mechanisms were in place to their satisfaction. Still Google is being very cautious, only integrating some sub-set of what they are actually capable of. That's good IMO. There are a lot of possible missteps and unanticipated negatives. Moving slowly is the right way to go. Microsoft was throwing caution to the wind in striving for market share.
So knowing that, Apple is not behind IMO. It will be a few years before they need to have a complementary feature in order to remain competitive.
Google at 'code red' over ChatGPT, plans competing AI products (9to5google.com)
Maybe it was a desperation move from MS, but it looks like it worked. Now Google is the one who looks desperate. Yes, MS took advantage of that with Windows 11 and Bing. And, again, it looks like it worked, considering Bing traffic is increasing.
Since Adding ChatGPT, Bing’s App Grew Almost As Much As All Last Year (forbes.com)
And the recent announcements of AI in MS Office were well received. At the moment, MS execution around AI have been very good.
BTW, you claim it was a desperation move from MS by pressuring users to use Bing. How is Apple different when they pressure users to have a Mac / iOS device if they want to use iMessage? Would you say that Apple is desperate too?
It cloud be as you said, or Google was slow to protect their search business,
ChatGPT and Other Chat Bots Are a ‘Code Red’ for Google Search - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
ChatGPT May Hurt Google's Ad Business Model, Former Exec Says: Report (businessinsider.com)
We don't know for sure if Apple is behind. We'll have to wait at the announcements in WWDC. But if you ask me today, I would say that they area behind Google and MS in AI. And it looks like I'm not the only one who think that,
AI is changing technology and Apple is lagging behind with Siri (9to5mac.com)