Inside Apple’s Big Plan to Bring Generative AI to All Its Devices
Apple was caught flat-footed when ChatGPT and other AI tools took the technology industry by storm. But the company is now preparing its response and plans to develop features for its full range of devices. Also: The future of the Mac comes into focus, a cheaper Apple Pencil debuts, and the Vision Pro gets closer.
One of the most intense and widespread endeavors at Apple Inc. right now is its effort to respond to the AI frenzy sweeping the technology industry.
The company has some catching up to do. Apple largely sat on the sidelines when OpenAI’s ChatGPT took off like a rocket last year. It watched as Google and Microsoft Corp. rolled out generative AI versions of their search engines, which spit out convincingly human-like responses to users’ queries. Microsoft also updated its Windows apps with smarter assistants, and Amazon.com Inc. unveiled an AI-enhanced overhaul of Alexa.
All the while, the only noteworthy AI release from Apple was an improved auto-correct system in iOS 17.
Now, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook says that Apple has been working on generative AI technology for years. But I can tell you in no uncertain terms that Apple executives were caught off guard by the industry’s sudden AI fever and have been scrambling since late last year to make up for lost time.
“There’s a lot of anxiety about this and it’s considered a pretty big miss internally,” a person with knowledge of the matter told Power On.
As I first reported in July, the company built its own large language model called Ajax and rolled out an internal chatbot dubbed “Apple GPT” to test out the functionality. The critical next step is determining if the technology is up to snuff with the competition and how Apple will actually apply it to its products.
Apple’s senior vice presidents in charge of AI and software engineering, John Giannandrea and Craig Federighi, are spearheading the effort. On Cook’s team, they’re referred to as the “executive sponsors” of the generative AI push. Eddy Cue, the head of services, is also involved, I’m told. The trio are now on course to spend about $1 billion per year on the undertaking.
Giannandrea is overseeing development of the underlying technology for a new AI system, and his team is revamping Siri in a way that will deeply implement it. This smarter version of Siri could be ready as soon as next year, but there are still concerns about the technology and it may take longer for Apple’s AI features to spread across its product line.
Federighi’s software engineering group, meanwhile, is adding AI to the next version of iOS. There’s an edict to fill it with features running on the company’s large language model, or LLM, which uses a flood of data to hone AI capabilities. The new features should improve how both Siri and the Messages app can field questions and auto-complete sentences, mirroring recent changes to competing services.
Apple’s software engineering teams are also looking at integrating generative AI into development tools like Xcode, a move that could help app developers write new applications more quickly. That would bring it in line with services like Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, which offers auto-complete suggestions to developers while they write code.
And Cue’s organization is pushing to add AI to as many apps as possible. The group is exploring new features for Apple Music, including auto-generated playlists (this is something Spotify rolled out earlier this year in partnership with OpenAI), as well as the company’s productivity apps.
Cue’s team is examining how generative AI can be used to help people write in apps like Pages or auto-create slide decks in Keynote. Again, this is similar to what Microsoft has already launched for its Word and PowerPoint apps. Apple is also testing generative AI for internal customer service apps within its AppleCare group, I’ve previously reported.
One debate going on internally is how to deploy generative AI: as a completely on-device experience, a cloud-based setup or something in between. An on-device approach would work faster and help safeguard privacy, but deploying Apple’s LLMs via the cloud would allow for more advanced operations.
The on-device strategy also makes it harder for Apple to update its technology and adapt to a fast-changing industry. With that in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised if the company adopts a combined approach: using on-device processing for some features and the cloud for more advanced tasks.
When it comes to getting this right, the stakes are high. Generative AI has quickly become much more than a buzzword and will be central to the next several decades of computing. Apple knows it can’t afford to take a back seat.
TheIdea – The Innovation Agency 