Apple and OpenAI allegedly reach deal ahead of WWDC

Perhaps against the wishes of Apple's AI chief John Giannandrea, Apple and OpenAI have reportedly reached a deal that will bring ChatGPT to iOS 18 and other operating systems in 2024.

Apple wants to bring AI to its platforms, but it has focused on privacy-preserving on-device models and not the Large Language Models (LLMs) used by its competitors. So, the company has been seeking a partnership with Google or Microsoft to bring their LLMs to iPhone.

According to a report, a deal has finally been struck between OpenAI and Apple. The details of the deal aren't known, but it likely means technologies used for ChatGPT could be accessible by Apple users, namely through Siri.

A deal with OpenAI doesn't close out options with other AI industry players. One rumor suggested Apple was looking to create an AI App Store, so OpenAI could be one of several companies populating such a store.

Internal politics are the likely driver of this compromise, as the report shared that Apple's Senior Vice President Machine Learning and AI Strategy, John Giannandrea, said in an email in 2023 that "the last thing people needed was another chatbot." So, either Apple didn't bother with a server-side LLM or they started too late and it isn't ready.

Whatever the case, if this report is true, Apple likely won't be announcing an Apple-made LLM to replace Siri. Instead, it will use server-side products like ChatGPT to answer user questions.

For example, today if you ask Siri something that would require a search, Siri sends a search query to Google using an anonymous identifier. OpenAI could have a similar option for users where queries requiring AI would pass information to ChatGPT in a privacy-preserving way and return a useful answer read by Siri.

The WWDC keynote where everything will be revealed is on June 10. Stay tuned to AppleInsider as we continue to break exclusive leaks surrounding iOS 18 and AI.

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37 Comments

tmay 6456 comments · 11 Years

About 6 months ago

Pearl clutching, and handwringing, ensue...

mikethemartian 1493 comments · 18 Years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BqOAFISf-A

danox 3442 comments · 11 Years

We shall see I anticipate Apple will temporarily use OpenAI like they used Google for Maps until they get their version online.......Note the Google geeks are still up in arms about it like many in tech are still mad about Apple dumping Intel keeping AMD and Nvidia at arms length with their SOC designs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1cwdlak/notebookcheck_apple_m4_soc_analysis_amd_intel_and/ Geek Meltdown :smile:

slow n easy 400 comments · 9 Years

This is very welcome news for me. I don't even try to ask Siri anything even remotely complicated anymore. All I use Siri for is to turn on or off my lights and other Apple related things and simple stuff like weather and sports scores. Like for example today I wanted to know "from which country is Ulanzi based in" and I already knew that there would be zero chance of Siri having any kind of answer. I asked ChatGPT and got a definite answer that I feel very confident is accurate.

prince 90 comments · 19 Years

kitchenbox said:

but but but DED was frothing at the mouth that nothing can compete with Apple AI, especially not CoPilot.
And now Apple is putting OpenAI, that is part of the power behind CoPilot, in their phones.

DED swings, and misses as usual.

Bing Chat isn't OpenAI. Also, Microsoft's Copilot PC isn't really about AI or "Apple's AI," but about an effort by Microsoft to raise the price of the PC to where Apple is selling its Macs, rather than in the bargain basement of generic Android/PCs. That's something Microsoft has been really bad at doing, as the article you referenced made clear--ever since it started trying to do this in the iPod days.

If you don't understand an article you just read, maybe you should hesitate to put your fake chat name on your arrogant opinions about it, because like the thousands of hecklers over the last 15 years, you'll end up looking like another bitter crank who ended up with egg on his face trying to scramble up a hater omelette.