Apple’s OpenAI partnership likely just temporary, says Siri co-founder

Apple’s OpenAI partnership – which will be used to bring generative AI features to Siri – is likely just an interim one, while the company expands and deepens its own chatbot tech.

The prediction was made by Dag Kittlaus, who co-founded Siri before the tech was acquired by Apple …

Apple’s OpenAI partnership

Apple’s OpenAI deal was reported by Bloomberg earlier this month.

Apple is finalizing an agreement with OpenAI to bring some of its technology to the iPhone this year, according to a new report from Bloomberg. With this deal, the report explains that Apple will be able to offer “a popular chatbot” powered by ChatGPT as part of its AI-focused features in iOS 18.

The iPhone maker is believed to have signed the deal as a means of rapidly making Siri far smarter as part of a relaunch in iOS 18.

Apple hasn’t yet publicly confirmed the partnership, and is expected to keep the announcement low-key, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman not expected to appear on stage in next week’s keynote.

But Apple also has its own chatbot

Apple has been working for some time on its own generative AI chatbot, which has been dubbed Apple GPT. It was reported that Apple has been using it internally for around a year or more.

An Apple research paper subsequently indicated that the company was aiming to have its chatbot be capable of running on-device, to maximize privacy while carrying out local processing – for example, summarizing text stored on an iPhone. With ChatGPT, in contrast, all processing is down on OpenAI servers.

Siri co-founder thinks OpenAI is an interim step

A new Bloomberg piece, which is mostly a recap of what it has previously reported, includes the quote from Kittlaus.

[Apple is] infusing its Siri digital assistant with AI. But the company’s own chatbot isn’t yet up to snuff.

The OpenAI partnership is likely a “short- to medium-term relationship” for Apple, said Dag Kittlaus, a tech veteran who co-founded and ran the Siri business before it was acquired by Apple. “But you can bet that they will be working hard building out their own competencies here.”

9to5Mac’s Take

The report makes sense. Apple likes to own the complete stack – hardware, software, and services – and this tight integration is key to the ecosystem. Ultimately, the iPhone maker is likely to want to use its own generative AI tech too.

But it will take the company time to catch up with the capabilities of ChatGPT, and Apple really can’t wait any longer. An interim deal solves that problem, while also offering another key benefit: protection from the flaws in current generative AI tech.

We noted just last week that ChatGPT and its rivals remain highly prone to AI hallucinations – where a system confidently gives completely wrong or utterly bonkers answers.

Just in the last few days the dietary advice from AI tools has included adding glue to pizza, eating rocks, and making spaghetti with gasoline.

Apple is reportedly labelling its AI features as a beta, and will apply a disclaimer along the lines of ‘This response was generated by ChatGPT.’ In this way, the company can insulate itself from the inevitable embarrassing results.

Bloomberg says anyone wanting to use the generative AI features in iOS 18 will need to explicitly opt-in, which will further emphasize the experimental nature of the initial launch.

Photo by Omid Armin on Unsplash