Apple inching closer to ChatGPT deal with OpenAI
Talks between Apple and OpenAI have advanced so far, that a deal is reportedly close to completion that may bring ChatGPT generative AI technology to iOS 18 in some fashion.
ChatGPT is in the App Store now
A report published late on Friday is light on details. However, it does claim that Apple and OpenAI are "finalizing terms" to use ChatGPT in iOS 18.
In the report, Apple is also said to still be in talks with Google for Gemini. It's less clear how far along those discussions are.
Regardless that Friday's report from Bloomberg alludes to an imminent deal, it all seems to be related to Apple's rumored overall strategy to offer an AI App Store. The company is rumored to be planning to offer smaller on-device models of its own design while outsourcing LLMs to bigger existing companies like Google.
As with any of these rumors surrounding Apple's AI plans, it's best to take them with a grain of salt. Apple hired AI and search maven John Giannandrea six years ago. And, that hiring was after eight years at Google developing machine learning for the search engine giant.
And, Apple's efforts have been ongoing for some time. Since 2023, just days after that year's WWDC, Apple has been widely expected to debut its own AI efforts at WWDC. It will likely roll out AI-assisted browsing in Safari, is expected to include a Siri that's more conversational and versatile, as well as a generative AI system enabling it to chat.
Apple also plans to use its on-device processing as a major plus point for customers. This is emphasized somewhat by Apple's remarks during the recent iPad event, saying it has been shipping devices with AI hardware optimizations for years.
There has also been considerable discussion about Ajax, an LLM that can cover many different functions that Siri can theoretically perform. For example, Apple is expected to offer text summarization analyzing whether contacts are involved, and providing more intelligent results to Spotlight.
And, we broke news of a similar technology that is expected to be included system-wide to assist in summarizing voice notes, and other audio sources. This too is expected to be on-device.
While rivals have gone down the route of scraping public sources for data, earning criticism in the process, Apple thought differently. Instead, it offered millions to publishers to access news archives, keeping its own AI training above board.
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Comments
Will OpenAI grab personal user data?
When Apple started the iPhone… chips were from Samsung… then their own.
When Apple started Siri… the speech recognition system was from an external company… now it is its own.
When iPhone launched… Maps were from Google… now it is its own.
And so on…
PS: Samsung example means nothing here. They simply bought chips from Samsung. While Apple does license from ARM and then design their own chips which are built by TMSC, they still buy from Samsung, too.
The 2010 logo represents what the third-party Siri app looked like before its acquisition and integration into iOS.
I will definitely be reading the TOS if ChatGPT is integrated into iOS. Most likely I will disable it to begin with and wait to read about its usage.
On top of that, I am a late adopter of iOS upgrades. For many years I don't upgrade when the new iOS releases in the fall. This year, I will upgrade to the latest iOS and macOS in June, about a week before WWDC. This pretty much ensures that I will only get updates for minor bug fixes and security patches.
So any new AI functions that Apple introduces in iOS 16 I'll see in June 2025.
The only atypical aspect here regarding Apple acquiring a company and using its IP is that they kept the same name.The 3rd-party app became built-in service name, when usually it gets folded in and you never hear the acquired company mentioned again.
I know nothing about Samsung, have never used any of their phones. Never mentioned Samsung in my post.
As for why Apple retained the Siri branding, I have no idea. Maybe they liked the name. Maybe it was already trademarked and they didn't want to launch another trademark search to replace something that already had substantial brand recognition.
If Apple concentrates on the best on-device experience but concedes that sometimes that will require outside help, then I could see them using their own system to "normalise" the request. Standardising the request which would make it anonymous. Allow the users to choose which service(s) they want to use as they can now deliver standardised requests even maybe by-passing an early layer of the AI processing to get faster results overall.
In that case, I am seriously asking what John Giannandrea has done so far at Apple.. I am curious to know...