Apple’s anticipated partnership with OpenAI for an iOS 18 chatbot could be publicly announced at WWDC 2024, reports Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman in the latest edition of the Power On newsletter.
As covered earlier, Apple has been approaching several AI companies to provide a backend for a new chatbot feature that is expected to debut on iOS 18 next month. Apple was reportedly nearing deals with OpenAI and Google to license ChatGPT and Gemini for the iPhone, and it now seems that the OpenAI partnership is locked in, with the partnership likely to be publicly discussed at WWDC 2024.
The report adds that Apple has to rely on an external AI chatbot provider for the time being as the company’s in-house chatbot is yet to be up to standards. The OpenAI partnership will play a “component” at Apple’s developers’ conference next month, with the iOS 18 chatbot expected to have very close capabilities to what ChatGPT currently offers.
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Apple is also in talks with Google to utilize the latter’s Gemini infrastructure for the iPhone’s chatbot, yet talks have stagnated since they were first reported on in March. Today, Gurman believes Apple is still interested in Gemini, yet a deal between both companies is unlikely to be finalized in time for WWDC 2024. Apple also approached Baidu to power some AI features for iPhone users in China, though the current status of these talks remains unclear.
Beyond offering a chatbot, almost all of Apple’s AI features will be based around the company’s Large Language Model (LLM) known as Ajax, with most running locally on-device. More comprehensive features will reportedly be processed on Apple-run servers powered by the company’s M2 Ultra chip and future Apple silicon.
