Last year, Apple made it clear that it has yet no plans to launch a dedicated chatbot to rival ChatGPT, Gemini, or similar services. However, since this statement wasn’t set in stone, the company may already be laying the groundwork for an in-house AI chatbot.
In the latest edition of the Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman reports that Apple is indeed moving toward developing an AI chatbot. According to Gurman, the company formed a team earlier this year called “Answers, Knowledge, and Information” to work on a range of in-house AI services, including a “ new ChatGPT-like search experience.”
Apple’s new AI team is led by Robby Walker, the former head of Siri development, who was removed from the Siri project and later appointed to lead the new AI task force.
Moreover, Gurman writes that the team is developing an “answer engine” capable of crawling the web to respond to general-knowledge questions. “A standalone app is currently under exploration, alongside new back-end infrastructure meant to power search capabilities in future versions of Siri, Spotlight, and Safari.” He added.
Apple has also begun hiring new talent with expertise in search algorithms and engine development. Apple’s AI chatbot may be years away from an official release, but its competition with ChatGPT will be interesting to watch.
Apple has already integrated ChatGPT into the Siri voice assistant, allowing iPhone users to enjoy similar AI benefits as their Android counterparts. However, past experience has shown that Apple doesn’t typically play well with third-party service providers and tends to replace them with in-house alternatives whenever the opportunity arises.
It remains to be seen how Apple wants to build its answer engine. A day after releasing the record-breaking Q3 earnings report, CEO Tim Cook said Apple will “significantly” increase its investment in AI, plus the iPhone maker is now “very open” to acquisitions in the AI sector.
Coincidentally, rumors have emerged that Apple is interested in acquiring Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine.