An Android in your Apple???

You heard that right! 

It has recently come to light that Apple is in talks with its long-time market rival - Google, to integrate GeminiAI into the next generation of iPhones for various features including but not limited to Siri. Apple has also conducted similar meetings with OpenAI regarding their chat models. These updates are supposed to launch with iOS18 scheduled later this year.

Google CEO(Sundar Pichai-Left) Apple CEO(Tim Cook-Right)

GeminiAI is multiModal. This means that it can understand and respond in various forms such as text, image, video, audio, and code. While Gemini's results are not as advanced as ChatGPT 4.0 and Microsoft Copilot, they are to be refined with future updates to its LLM.

Integrating GeminiAI into the Apple Ecosystem can enhance the overall user experience to quite an extent. Image generation, task automation, smart file management, etc. are all features that we might see coming to iOS devices if this deal goes through. This will also bring much-needed improvements to Siri, making the voice assistant assimilate higher-level question requests and generate more humanized responses. Although updates to Siri might take time due to the way it is built. Ex-Siri engineer John Burkey told the New York Times that Siri‌'s "cumbersome design" means that adding new phrases requires rebuilding the ‌Siri‌ database. He went on to talk about how working on more complex features like search tools could take upwards of a year. While it's too early to say for sure if this deal will go through successfully, we can say for certain that Apple intends to upgrade its feature playlist with upcoming software updates to keep up with competitors.

AppleGPT?

Embracing the AI boom, Apple themselves are experimenting with an in-house AI model codenamed 'Ajax'.

Ajax, an experimental framework, was originally developed sometime in 2022 and has only been tested by Apple employees ever since. Speculation suggests that this chatbot can supposedly outperform ChatGPT3.5. Apple's chief on the AI front is John Giannandrea, a long-time engineer specializing in ML and computer science research and has been on the AI project for Apple for the last 4 years. 

Observing the fruit company's current standpoint on AI, we might not see its own AI apps released anytime soon. Apple might keep attempting to furnish their LLMs till they are confident that they would be a fierce competitor to OpenAIs ChatGPT 5.0, estimated to be released later this summer.

Credits: Bloomberg, NewYorkTimes, MacRumors