Tim Cook confirms Apple is researching ChatGPT-style AI

Apple CEO Tim Cook has told UK press that the company is "of course" working on generative AI, and that he expects to hire more Artificial intelligence staff in that country.

Just hours after Apple put a spotlight on how it supports over half a million jobs in the UK, Tim Cook has been talking about increasing that by hiring more staff working in AI.

According to London's Evening Standard, Cook was asked by the PA news agency about AI and hiring in the UK. Cook said: "We're hiring in that area, yes, and so I do expecting [recruitment] to increase."

"[Artificial Intelligence is] all over our products today," he said, "it's behind the Fall Detection on the [Apple] Watch, it's behind Crash Detection, it's behind Afib [atrial fibrillation] detection, it's behind the ECG, it's predictive typing on iPhone"

Cook also confirmed rumors that Apple is at least researching a ChatGPT-like service.

"[Artificial Intelligence is] literally everywhere on our products," he continued, "and of course we're also researching generative AI as well, so yes we have a lot going on."

Cook visited Apple's new UK headquarters in Battersea Power Station, and then visited the nearby St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary School.

"[The UK is] our third largest employee population around the world from a country point of view," said Cook. "It's also the leading developer community for Europe and it's as vibrant as ever before, it's dynamic."

"We love serving the [UK] market," he continued, " we've been here for 40 years, so it's deeply embedded in us."

29 Comments

mayfly 385 comments · 1 Year

About 1 year ago

An Apple-engineered generative AI would mean I never again have to sift through the mountains of sponsored crap to find information I need or want. It would end Google's domination of search for me. And good riddance, too. The only problem I see is real-time updates to the data set. That's a massive undertaking requiring upfront capital expenditures for hardware well before any financial benefits would be realized. Lot of money, even for Apple.

mjtomlin 2690 comments · 20 Years

This was already confirmed at WWDC and in their latest operating systems. The new predictive text feature is uses a LLM, based on the transformer machine learning model. So yeah, we know they’ve been working on it.

chasm 3590 comments · 10 Years

mjtomlin said:

This was already confirmed at WWDC and in their latest operating systems. The new predictive text feature is uses a LLM, based on the transformer machine learning model. So yeah, we know they’ve been working on it.

Even before I upgraded to iOS 17, I noticed a distinct improvement in the predictive text quality. I’m hopeful that Apple can contribute more “intelligence” into applications of AI, rather than the current fad of just slapping this nearly-meaningless and inaccurate “AI” term onto literally everything anyone can think of.

gatorguy 24607 comments · 13 Years

mayfly said:

An Apple-engineered generative AI would mean I never again have to sift through the mountains of sponsored crap to find information I need or want. It would end Google's domination of search for me. And good riddance, too. The only problem I see is real-time updates to the data set. That's a massive undertaking requiring upfront capital expenditures for hardware well before any financial benefits would be realized. Lot of money, even for Apple.

When have you ever seen "sponsored crap" answers surfaced in Google's Generative AI? Any example would be nice. Perhaps Microsoft does that, but I've yet to see a single instance on Google after thousands of information searches

Kierkegaarden 244 comments · 1 Year

Apple has incorporated machine learning into their products for years, but they never marketed it like some companies have with their AI endeavors. I understand why, but maybe this will change. Maybe they will turn Siri into an assistant you could simply text with instead speak to. Always there to chat with, whenever you want. I see search being greatly disrupted.