Apple, the tech titan we all know and love, is diving deeper into the Artificial Intelligence (AI) pool, according to a recent report by Bloomberg. This news marks an exciting shift for Apple, leading to a ripple in its shares, which climbed up to a record high by 2%.
The story tells of an intriguing project codenamed “Ajax”. This project focuses on building large language models (LLMs), mirroring the capabilities of renowned AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. Apple’s skilled engineers are even test-driving a chatbot currently nicknamed “Apple GPT”, this is straight from the horse’s mouth, well, in this case, sources familiar with the matter.
It might strike you as odd given Apple’s relatively quiet AI journey so far. The company has been somewhat silent on the AI front, holding its cards close to its chest. Its recent developer conference in June didn’t even whisper the AI buzzword, a stark contrast to other tech juggernauts like Alphabet and Microsoft, both of which are heavily invested in the AI sphere.
This news led to a slight disturbance in the tech market. Shares of major AI players such as Microsoft, Nvidia, and Alphabet took a slight hit, with more than a 1% drop after the news surfaced.
Apple isn’t entirely new to the AI game, though. It’s been stealthily weaving advanced AI into products like Apple Photos, on-device texting, and the freshly launched mixed-reality headset Vision Pro. Yet, market analysts argue that Apple is still a few steps behind its peers in harnessing this transformative technology fully.
Interestingly, Apple’s longstanding AI offering, the voice assistant Siri, has remained largely static over the years. However, with the recent developments, we might just see a resurgence.
Leading this novel AI endeavor are John Giannandrea, the company’s Head of Machine Learning and AI, and Craig Federighi, Apple’s chief software engineering executive. The fruit of their labor, a new virtual assistant that has the capability to summarize text and answer questions based on trained data. The tool is already in use for internal product prototyping, emulating the functionalities of Bard, ChatGPT, and Bing AI, as a web application.
The report concludes with a tantalizing teaser – while Apple hasn’t carved out a definitive plan for its budding AI tools, it’s aiming to make some noise in the AI world with a major announcement planned for next year.
So, get ready to see Apple potentially reshaping the AI landscape. Let’s sit tight and watch as the AI saga unfolds!
