Bloomberg News’ today reported that Apple is not planning to debut its own generative AI chatbot with its next major software updates, including iOS 18 for the iPhone. Instead, reported Mark Gurman reiterated that Apple has held licensing talks with companies such as Google, Microsoft/OpenAI, and Baidu about generative AI partnerships.
Joe Rossignol for MacRumors:
Recent reports indicated that Apple has considered licensing existing chatbots, such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but Apple offering its own chatbot of some kind on iOS 18 had not been explicitly ruled out until now.
Gurman still expects AI to be a major focus at Apple’s just-announced WWDC 2024 developers conference. He reiterated that Apple plans to announce new AI features that “assist users in their daily lives,” but he did not provide any specific details. He has previously reported that generative AI will improve Siri’s ability to answer more complex questions, and allow the Messages app to auto-complete sentences.
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
MacDailyNews Take: Generative AI chatbots require large, dedicated data centers which will take Apple time (years) to build out, if they are planning on owning this technology instead of just farming it out.
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
They have Siri….problem solved.
You may be on the right track. Like all browsers on iOS have to use Webkit instead of their own respective engines basically just making them skins on Safari, Siri will just be a skin on whoever Apple partners up with. Why should Apple break their own ‘pattern’.
Apple announced that future iterations in the EU will not require Webkit, and most people expect that to be expanded worldwide by the end of this calendar year, if not before then.
If the implementation is anything like requiring fees from 3rd party App Stores, I’m not expecting any browser to be completely free of Webkit dependency on iOS anytime soon.
what i WANT is to be able to say “siri, play some 80’s music using my wife’s iphone’s music library” and have it “just work”. “siri, play the current music through the kitchen and livingroom speakers”. boom. “siri, close the top middle shade in the living room”.
David, we all know how you feel. Please come to our next Siri Support Group. We meet regularly (but not enough). At our next meeting, the topic is; “It Just Works Now Feels Like a Lie and Why it’s Not Your Fault.”
I’m afraid Apple has no answer and nothing original to show in the AI space. That’s why like Samsung, Apple will be licensing AI from google. Just like the Apple car, their AI efforts will lead no where. Think about that, in terms to the most important
technology revolution in human history, the once great Apple has nothing to show. Out of desperation and the need to announce something Apple will license Gemini. Google will control and own all the data and generation. Apple will just be a place holder. Apple knows they lack the in house leadership and talent to be competitive in AI so like the project titan, they have given up, conceded the critical high ground and ran into the arms of their once mortal enemy. But don’t worry at the next WWDC apple will tells us how much progress they are making towards Tim’s personal goal of being carbon free. And Im sure, they will brag about all the Hollywood awards their irrelevant Apple TV + has won. I would say Tim should step aside but his replacement is most assuredly would be as clueless as he/him
Let’s not get too dramatic. Apple is behind but the jury is still out on the utility of AI in the coming years. It’ll draft an email for you that you still have to carefully read and edit, or spit out an information summary (based on whatever preferred dataset the leftist programmers chose), but it’s not going to clear out your inbox or problem-solve anything more complex than what you could find for yourself through a few Google searches.
Maybe we’ll get more robots to do certain repetitive tasks on command, but you can bet that the main driver of “the most important technology revolution in human history” is the reduction of those loathsome labor costs by eliminating/replacing as many human beings as possible.
Relax, Apple is just skating to where the puck will be, not where it is 😉
Current Apple isn’t even in the same building as the puck
Apple will have to get ahead of the puck first. At the moment they’re just chasing the players that have the puck.
Half the time Siri doesn’t ever respond at all. The thought of it doing something useful is preposterous
I’d like to talk to the person in charge of spell check. I assume they work with the same group that’s in charge of auto-suggest? Anyone know if they speak English, or if they share workers with the Boeing Mechanics Dept?
Good. Apple shouldn’t develop their own full gAI, too messy, just like search, let us plug in whatever back end we want, like with search in safari. There’s lots of interesting ones out there. GabAI has different characters you can choose from, like Elon Musk, MalcomX, even Hitler lol
Apple should have some advanced version of Siri on device though that 1) actually works, 2) can learn about you (ie where was I last saturday night? How much did I spend via Apple card on grubhub last month? etc.), and 3) can handle more complex tasks, learn commands and patterns without having to use Shortcuts, etc.
All the people complaining about Apple not being at the forefront of “AI” need to go back and watch the presentations from the 2023 WWDC. Apple repeatedly mentioned that they were already integrating Machine Learning (ML) and other technologies that people all too often lump under the incorrect heading of “AI”.
Here’s a wake up call for everyone. There is no such thing as “AI”. There is no artificial intelligence today. No system has crossed the singularity yet. Period. “AI” is just a fancy buzzword that people use (improperly) to cover a raft of real world technologies.
The error on Apple’s part during 2023 WWDC in not saying Apple was doing “AI” was not recognizing that the buzzword had taken hold and that Apple would be severely beaten up by everything from end user groups to media to the stock market.
“AI” is hype. People are buying into that hype. Apple not recognizing that they had to go with the hype was Apple’s big mistake, and Apple has been paying the price for it ever since.
I don’t think it matters what you call it. Apple is behind the competition. Apple introduced their Neural Engine with the A11 back in 2017. What benefit that competes today benefitting the user have they developed in the last 7 years?