Only eight months have passed since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the world and since then the big tech companies have not stopped looking for a way to get on the bandwagon of generative artificial intelligence. Microsoft, Google and now Meta have already presented their models and have exposed their launch strategies for this technology that creates all kinds of content. But there is some notable absence, that of the company that tends to keep its secrets more jealously. What about Apple's AI?
The company led by Tim Cook has spent years developing products that exploit artificial intelligence. For example, in the computational photography of the iPhone, or in features such as the detection of accidents or falls of mobile phones or Apple Watch. The number of services and features on your devices that use AI is huge, but it all happens in the background, without user intervention. But in Cupertino they have not forgotten about generative language models. In fact, they have the technology, although they do not seem to have defined the way to bring it to the general public.
The Bloomberg agency assures that Apple has an artificial intelligence conversational bot comparable to ChatGPT, although it is only for internal use. Apple's AI system is called Ajax and it has a web application to hold conversations with it. That same information indicates that Apple wants to have the privacy problems of this technology resolved before making it available to the public.
It is the opposite strategy to that applied by the rest of the big technology companies, which are building their models and applications at a time when there is hardly any regulation in Europe and the United States and are maintaining their product launch calendar, although knowing that they will need to adapt to future regulations that are already being drafted. Apple has a serious commitment to privacy as one of its hallmarks, so it cannot afford to rush into a field that has so much to explore. Running around too much with the AI can lead to stumbles.
Until now, Apple CEO Tim Cook has shown caution with this technology. “There are a number of problems that need to be resolved,” the manager said in May. In addition to privacy, AI models such as OpenAI's GPT-4 have some drawbacks, such as the possibility of inventing things or the fact that they are so-called "black box" systems, in which not even their own creators know how artificial intelligence makes some decisions and not others.
Information from Bloomberg indicates that Apple has already managed to use artificial intelligence to allow it to make some improvements in products such as its virtual assistant Siri, maps and searches. Ajax is used to create large language models that feed the chat that is now used internally.
In the job offers, the Cupertino company seeks to hire engineers with "solid knowledge of large linguistic models and generative AI" to work on the way in which "people communicate, create, connect and consume media" on the brand's devices. Siri can get a lot smarter.
