iOS 18 Reportedly Won't Feature Apple's Own ChatGPT-Like Chatbot

[MacAddict1978]

I couldn’t care less about having a chatbot, but I would welcome Siri getting better at understanding what I’m asking for and being able to actually remember context. Asking for specific music is such a chore when artists spell their names or song/album titles weird, have live versions, etc.

This would require off device processing that Apple doesn't do as a "benefit" to users for privacy.

Apple should allow Google to let Google Assistant use those API frameworks - it actually works. Privacy phobes can just use the stupid one, er, Siri and swear a lot.

 

[appleCakes]

Once they start with someone else, it will be almost impossible to switch due to layers (and years) of software work and fast pace of developments. Besides, there will be no chance to differentiate (what colossal failure if this is indeed true). Partnership with Google would bring antitrust concerns worse than the current search issue. They better partner with some advanced startup like Anthropic, and later bite the bullet and acquire them. Siri (not that it is wonderful) started similar. They may be even doing this already and are leaking alternatives for price shopping.

 

[Surf Monkey]

What good does anyone know or can anyone tell about this bozo?
(in case you're not familiar with bozos read about Steve Jobs history with them).

Apple Leadership - John Giannandrea

John Giannandrea is Apple’s senior vice president of Machine Learning and AI Strategy and a member of Apple’s executive team. Learn more about John.

www.apple.com

Hmm.

Amid a Heated A.I. Race, Apple Struggles to Retain Top Talent

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observer.com

Apple to Shutter 121-Person San Diego AI Team in Reorganization

(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. is shutting a 121-person team related to artificial intelligence operations in San Diego, leaving many employees at risk of termination, according to people familiar with the matter.Most Read from BloombergBlinken Stranded After Boeing 737 Breaks Down on Davos...

finance.yahoo.com

Two Apple Executives Reportedly At Odds On How Company Should Progress With Its AI Tools, One Wants To See How ChatGPT Evolves

Two high-ranking Apple executives reportedly have different opinions on how the company should move forward with its rumored AI tools

wccftech.com

After reading all of these there is a strong subtext: Tim Cook is missing. Executives are fighting. Leadership vacuum.

 

[Realityck]

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman 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, he reiterated that Apple has held discussions with companies such as Google, OpenAI, and Baidu about potential generative AI partnerships.

How many times must people associate “generative“ with AI specially with an operating system? Apple is not trying to use the OS to generate text, images, videos, other generative data. They are more likely to use digital assistants with OS and apps to accomplish things.

 

[steve123]

I’d like to see how Apple implements privacy as I wouldn’t want Google through Gemini to have access to my Apple ecosystem data.

If they go this route it will be the end of Apple.

Shocking. Apple was behind the curve.

They wasted years with their attention on Vision Pro instead of focusing on Siri and AI. They are going to pay dearly for that distraction. Instead of the distractions with the car and goggles, they should have been working on an AI robot.

 

[TVreporter]

I'd love to be a fly on the wall when they realized how fast they were behind on AI (or so it appears).

Is it Tim's fault? Or one of his "yes sir" below him? Too much focus on the Apple Car and Vision Pro?

 

[steve123]

The real question is if Apple can catch up by WWDC ‘26.

If it takes that long people will move on. Their lack of attention to this is an existential threat to Apple.

 

[anthogag]

AI is good, ChatGPT is for zombies and Gemini is for losers. Siri is Apple's chattybot. Make Siri the iPhone user's new best friend.

 

[Kottu]

If Apple ties up with Google and adopt Gemini, political correctness which google and Apple follow will bring a lot of scandal.

 

[AlexESP]

Hmm.

Amid a Heated A.I. Race, Apple Struggles to Retain Top Talent

Apple is the only Big Tech firm that has avoided massive layoffs, and yet stability hasn’t stopped its top engineers from leaving.

observer.com

Apple to Shutter 121-Person San Diego AI Team in Reorganization

(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. is shutting a 121-person team related to artificial intelligence operations in San Diego, leaving many employees at risk of termination, according to people familiar with the matter.Most Read from BloombergBlinken Stranded After Boeing 737 Breaks Down on Davos...

finance.yahoo.com

Two Apple Executives Reportedly At Odds On How Company Should Progress With Its AI Tools, One Wants To See How ChatGPT Evolves

Two high-ranking Apple executives reportedly have different opinions on how the company should move forward with its rumored AI tools

wccftech.com

After reading all of these there is a strong subtext: Tim Cook is missing. Executives are fighting. Leadership vacuum.

I think it’s a big logic jump to 1. believe some gossip from articles 2. consider that disagreements between co-workers equals “fighting” or “leadership vacuum”. Check all SJ interviews where he talks about how much they argue at Apple.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

I'd love to be a fly on the wall when they realized how fast they were behind on AI (or so it appears).

Is it Tim's fault? Or one of his "yes sir" below him? Too much focus on the Apple Car and Vision Pro?

No product people left in the company.

 

[ScanTheNavian]

To anyone who’s used chatGPT in voice mode, it becomes apparent the yet unrealized potential of Siri that was introduced a decade ago. You can have a casual, natural language conversation with a human-like assistant with access to all the information of the internet at your own pace. It’s extremely powerful but chatGPt doesn’t have access to your Apple apps like your calendar, to do list, contacts, etc. Having something like this embedded within iOS is going to be transformational.

I tried it out and it felt like I had been teleported ten years into the future. It feels as revolutionary as the iPhone to me.

The moment when we'll be able to talk to the assistant and it interrupts you or interjects in realtime, like in a normal conversation with a human, then the immersion will be complete. But the experience right now is amazing.

 

[scrapesleon]

Their own team can’t make Siri sensible so here we are

 

[robotfist]

If Siri is any indication of why AI is outside of Apple's wheelhouse, I don't know what is. I don't understand how they let Siri fall so behind and become this antiquated. They are a capable company with all the resources in the world, if anything Siri should have been leading the market. But Tim Cook is a hardware manufacturing and operations expert and software was never his thing.

I keep hearing rumors that Apple is pouring a lot of money into AI, so if they do make a deal with Google or Microsoft, I hope it's just a temporary one. They've already gone through this with Google Maps and iOS. They know they shouldn't be too reliant on a 3rd party for a key function of their best-selling product, the iPhone. AI will be entrenched in everything we do, from maps to browsing to productivity, etc. Apple cannot afford to let its AI endeavors become another dead-end Siri disaster.

 

[AlexESP]

First of all, LLM chatbots are very impressive, but that’s not relevant if they’re not very useful. First, because text/voice is not a good primary interface (visual elements are much more direct), and second, because providing results as factual answers shouldn’t be done when accuracy is not high. I think they should accelerate the use of AI/ML where it matters: image processing, workflow suggestions, music discovery, etc.

I believe this is why Apple has neglected Siri: voice assistants are a secondary feature with a lot of risks. And the reason why they will partner with other companies: it’s neither their core competence nor something that can bring much benefit to them.

 

[coolfactor]

Good? Who really expected this? Not their style, tbh.

As long as they "Apple-ify" the integration, I'm good with it. This might be the new Apple where they proactively work collaboratively with other companies to avoid the perception that they host a completely "closed" ecosystem.

 

[cardfan]

funny stuff. Apple is so behind.

 

[coolfactor]

If Siri is any indication of why AI is outside of Apple's wheelhouse, I don't know what is. I don't understand how they let Siri fall so behind and become this antiquated. They are a capable company with all the resources in the world, if anything Siri should have been leading the market. But Tim Cook is a hardware manufacturing and operations expert and software was never his thing.

There's a lot of confusion about this whole "AI" thing. It's not one thing. AI has many, many facets. Apple has employed machine learning for decades, but that's a totally different kind of technology from the "generative AI" that stormed onto the scene last year. Open AI was working on their tech for 10 years before the "ChatGPT era" was born, so I guess Appe can't be held totally unaccountable, but to say that Siri fell behind is a reach.

Siri does what s/he's designed to very well for most cases. S/he is vastly improved since the inauguration. Any claim otherwise is heavily biased.

 

[pmasters]

At this point Apple would have been better off just buying OpenAI and integrating it. I am extremely disappointed.

 

[nt5672]

Sounds like they were caught flat footed on this one.

Which is not unexpected when a Supply Chain expert is in charge.

 

[ralph_sws]

what for? we have siri

 

[coolfactor]

First of all, LLM chatbots are very impressive, but that’s not relevant if they’re not very useful. First, because text/voice is not a good primary interface (visual elements are much more direct), and second, because providing results as factual answers shouldn’t be done when accuracy is not high. I think they should accelerate the use of AI/ML where it matters: image processing, workflow suggestions, music discovery, etc.

I believe this is why Apple has neglected Siri: voice assistants are a secondary feature with a lot of risks. And the reason why they will partner with other companies: it’s neither their core competence nor something that can bring much benefit to them.

I disagree that Siri has been neglected. If you do a comparison year-over-year, the assistant has evolved right alongside every OS and hardware release.

The belief that Apple needs to have their own generative AI tech is where I think we have it wrong. Apple, as a tech provider, *enables* such technologies. People use Macs to develop the generative AI tools (money for Apple!), and consumers use Macs and iPhones to consume the generative AI tools (money for Apple!). Why Apple needs to compete with the same types of tools is not a good use of their efforts. Partnering with other companies is a definitely a better step forward (while applying their own principles of privacy, etc.)

If Apple has the wisdom to open up to outside platforms (we'll see in June!), then we can truly move forward. One of OS X's strengths was adherance to open standards, such as IMAP for mail and vCard for contacts. Somewhere long the way, Apple lost sight of that. I hope they can get back to it.

 

[oneteam]

Looks like Apple is resting on their laurels when it comes to AI.

 

[Jackbequickly]

Yes Google Gemini has such a great reputation and everyone loves how fair and non-political it is.

If this is the best Apple can do, they are in trouble.

 

[nt5672]

There's a lot of confusion about this whole "AI" thing. It's not one thing. AI has many, many facets. Apple has employed machine learning for decades, but that's a totally different kind of technology from the "generative AI" that stormed onto the scene last year. Open AI was working on their tech for 10 years before the "ChatGPT era" was born, so I guess Appe can't be held totally unaccountable, but to say that Siri fell behind is a reach.

Siri does what s/he's designed to very well for most cases. S/he is vastly improved since the inauguration. Any claim otherwise is heavily biased.

Maybe for Siri, I don't use Siri because it so bad. But Apple's file search, mail search, mail rules, spelling checks, battery charging, etc. are all behind best practice. So Apple has not employed machine learning for decades. They've talked about it. They've provided tools. But they have not deployed successful best practice machine learning in any product to date, that I know of.

What I do know is that most of Apple attempts at machine learning are just toys. Stuff that sounds great for the Keynote, but don't actually work that well.