Almost every technology company has been lasciviously chasing the AI buzz ever since OpenAI made ChatGPT publicly available last year. Among the biggies, Microsoft and Google have already landed in the pit with their respective chatbots capable of communicating in a convincingly human tone. Meta, too, has proven its chops with extensive machine-learning research, while the technology has convinced Elon Musk to spend billions on a new venture.
Apple, the wealthiest tech company — and incidentally, the wealthiest company overall, has been distant from the AI chatter. But it may soon join the race with its own chatbot, Bloomberg (paywalled) reports (via TechCrunch).
As per Bloomberg's celebrated Apple reporter, Mark Gurman, the company has been testing a generative AI chatbot. Internally referred to as "Apple GPT," employees are currently testing the tool for product prototyping, summarizing documents, and responding to basic questions.
Employees require special permission to access the tool and aren't allowed to use it for developing consumer-facing features. The tool won't be available for users to access until next year.
Whether it is to patch the current state of Siri or bring general improvements to iOS, macOS, and other custom operating systems for devices is something we will only know as we close in on the final release. By then, Gurman will have surely extracted some key tidbits about the chatbot.