Apple Joins Artificial Intelligence Competition with Launch of ‘Apple GPT’
Artificial intelligence has become a highly sought-after technology that has attracted the interest of many. While some were initially hesitant, even they are now embracing it. Notably, Elon Musk, who was a prominent critic of AI, has launched his own startup in the field called xAI. Additionally, Apple, a company known for its reluctance to acknowledge AI, has developed its own foundational model called Apple GPT, which has already been implemented internally as a generative AI platform.
The information comes from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, a longtime Apple tipster, who said in a tweet: “Apple is racing to build next-generation generative AI capabilities to catch up with OpenAI and Google. The company has developed a framework called Ajax for building LLMs and has deployed Apple GPT internally. Its goal is to have a consumer product next year.”
Ajax appears to be an in-house basic model that can help build large language models, one of which, according to the report, is Apple GPT. It is not known if the Apple GPT name will be used only for internal purposes or if it may also be the final name when the consumer product comes out.
Apple’s pursuit of AI can be complicated
The problem lies in data acquisition to create generative artificial intelligence and possibly a chatbot. Every other company that has come up with their own generative AI, be it Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, or more recently Meta, all rely on integrated cloud-based storage that the company has access to. This data is huge and can be used to train AI models. However, Apple doesn’t work this way.
TechRadar’s report explains that Apple uses a machine learning approach where Apple’s silicon locally learns about the owner of the device and that’s all the information it gets. In fact, Apple places a very strong emphasis on data privacy and security, and has repeatedly emphasized how it does not keep access to user data. Already at the launch of the Apple Watch Series 8 last year, Apple mentioned that none of the health data is stored on Apple’s servers and only the user has access to it.
A system built so strongly around the idea of not storing data is at odds with the requirements required to build an AI platform.
TechRadar’s report highlights that this is why it’s unlikely that Apple GPT will ever see the light of day and is likely just an internal project to further develop its technology.
Either way, we’re excited to see how AI development plays out for Apple and if we ever get to see integrated Apple GPT on iPhones.
