Apple Developing AI Chatbot to Compete with ChatGPT
After maintaining an unusual silence during the ongoing “AI wars,” Apple has finally made a move by developing its own chatbot, according to Bloomberg’s initial report. The toolset, playfully referred to as “AppleGPT” by engineers, is officially named Ajax and has been constructed using Google’s JAX framework. Insider sources reveal that Apple has assigned several teams to work on this project, with one specifically focused on addressing any potential privacy issues.
What is Apple really doing with the bot? That’s still unclear, as the company doesn’t seem to have any serious plans for use case scenarios, release dates, or platforms. An unnamed source told Bloomberg they expect an official announcement and more details next year. Apple will also hold its annual earnings call next month, which could shed some light on Ajax.
The move comes after Apple CEO Tim Cook told Good Morning America that generative AI is something the company is “looking closely at.” According to Bloomberg, the initiative is led by John Giannandrea and Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice president of software engineering. Giannandrea was originally hired to oversee Siri and its machine learning capabilities, so perhaps the much-maligned digital assistant is about to become much more useful.
The generative AI space has exploded in recent months, and nearly every major tech company has joined the hype train. Just yesterday, Meta and Microsoft released Llama 2, an AI chatbot for commercial use.
