Apple has officially planted its flag on the artificial intelligence turf with a little help from ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
The tech giant announced its partnership with OpenAI at its WWDC 2024 keynote on Monday.
The long-awaited deal brings ChatGPT into Apple’s offerings, including its Siri voice assistant and writing tools. Siri will ask for user approval before tapping into ChatGPT to bring back relevant suggestions based on user queries.
“We’re excited to partner with Apple to bring ChatGPT to their users in a new way,” Open AI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. “Apple shares our commitment to safety and innovation, and this partnership aligns with OpenAI’s mission to make advanced AI accessible to everyone. Together with Apple, we’re making it easier for people to benefit from what AI can offer.”
ChatGPT will be available for free in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia later this year. Additionally, ChatGPT subscribers can link their accounts to Apple to access paid features from OpenAI within Apple’s operating system, according to Craig Federighi, svp of software engineering at Apple.
Unlike its rivals (Google and Microsoft) who have rushed to integrate generative AI into their tech stack ever since ChatGPT made a public splash in late 2022, Apple has been conscientious about its gen AI efforts. Under the hood, the tech giant has been preparing for a comprehensive AI strategy to enhance its existing products and services, with an emphasis on making the user experience highly personal while keeping it privacy focused.
“This sets a brand-new standard for privacy and AI,” Federighi said during the pre-recorded keynote.
Automating writing and generating emojis
Apple’s AI reboot will bring a litany of its own AI features, dubbed Apple Intelligence, to its devices this fall.
Using gen AI, Apple is boosting Siri to carry out tasks on behalf of the user and allowing people to talk to more naturally to the voice assistant.
One such task shared by Apple was asking Siri to find a photo the user is looking for and send it to a friend. Another example shared by Apple was the ability to retrieve your driver’s license from your photo library, extract the license number and automatically paste it into a web form.
Apple’s gen AI makeover also brings email writing suggestions and text summaries, and generates reactions-based emoji called Genmoji on the fly.
“One of the realities of generative AI right now is that the impact isn’t about wiping entire industries off the map, but about individuals finding small but significant time savings through new AI-powered processes,” said Nathaniel Whittemore, CEO of AI education company Superintelligent. “Apple Intelligence is leaning all the way into that reality. They’re betting that the way most people are going to get into AI is by doing the same things they’re doing now, just a little faster.”
