Apple is partnering with OpenAI to put ChatGPT into Siri and launching its own AI features called Apple Intelligence, the company announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday (June 10).
ChatGPT will be available for free in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia later this year without an account. The popular chatbot will also be integrated into Apple’s writing tools.
Apple had been in discussions with both Google and OpenAI to incorporate their AI technology, and ultimately chose OpenAl.
“We’re excited to partner with Apple to bring ChatGPT to their users in a new way,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Apple confirmed that GPT-4o would be the model powering ChatGPT in Apple devices.
The new Siri will be able to function as an AI chatbot and receive written instructions. It will also be able to check emails, texts and photos to find specific information.
‘Apple Intelligence’
Apple also unveiled “Apple Intelligence”, its own suite of AI features. Chief executive Tim Cook said the move would bring Apple products to “new heights” as he opened the developers’ conference at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, on Monday .
“Apple Intelligence” is not a product or an app in its own right.
Instead, it will be part of every app and Apple product that customers use, there to help you in every way, from writing better to planning your itinerary.
In that sense, it is similar to Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot – but you won’t have to pay extra to activate it.
The new tools mark a major shift for Apple, which has seen slowing global sales over the past year, while rivals have thrived on AI.
Microsoft beat analysts’ expectations while the AI chipmaker Nvidia hit a $3 trillion valuation, overtaking Apple to become the world’s second most valuable public company.
Behind the scenes, however, Apple has been building up its artificial intelligence capabilities. It has acquired several AI startups, diverted employees to work on artificial intelligence and is setting up an AI research lab n Zurich.
Apple may have been slow to launch an AI product because it wants to maintain its privacy-focused brand. Because AI relies on collecting large amounts of data to train language learning models, the company’s partnership with OpenAI has raised privacy concerns. Elon Musk said Apple devices would be banned from his companies if they included ChatGPT.
But Apple plans to usher in a “new standard for privacy in AI”, said Tim Cooke.
Craig Federighi, senior vice-president of software engineering at Apple, said the company built most pf the “Apple intelligence” features with its own technology.
Apple will also use a new hybrid cloud system called “private cloud compute” for greater security. The company said it aimed to complete most of the processing for AI tools on-device but would provide additional privacy measures for more complex computing that required the cloud.
Sources: BBC, The Guardian, The Verge