Apple reportedly doesn’t know how its generative AI tech will look for consumers products, but it’s already playing a role behind the scenes.
Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman has shed light on how employees are using “Apple GPT” and highlighted possible use cases in customer service. Apple has already built a ChatGPT-esque AI chatbot that employees use internally to “prototype future features, summarize text and answer questions based on data it has been trained with.” Gurman also said Apple is exploring ways of integrating its large language model (LLM) into other areas of operations. That could include using it with AppleCare for assisting customers.
Unlike other big tech companies that have raced to launch generative AI tools for consumers, Apple has been cautious and tight-lipped. At WWDC 2023, there was a conspicuous absence of the term “AI” and CEO Tim Cook has spoken about the importance of being “very deliberate and very thoughtful” about the deployment of AI. One could easily imagine adding generative AI capabilities to Siri, which would make for a powerful upgrade to its somewhat neglected voice assistant. In Gurman’s initial report about Apple’s LLM development, he said the company is planning a “significant AI-related announcement next year.” But whether that’s consumer-related remains to be seen.
It’s characteristic of Apple to position itself as a maverick in the big tech landscape and not cater to trends. So however the company integrates generative AI will likely have its own uniquely Apple approach.
