Apple is making significant strides in the field of conversational AI, with reports indicating that the tech giant is dedicating substantial resources to this endeavor. According to a recent report from The Information, Apple's research and development budget for AI product research has reached unprecedented levels, with the company reportedly spending "millions of dollars a day" on this initiative.
The focus of Apple's efforts lies in enhancing the capabilities of its digital voice assistant, Siri. The company aims to enable users to seamlessly automate tasks that involve multiple steps through simple voice commands to Siri. For instance, users may be able to instruct Siri to create a GIF using their latest photos and then send it to a friend, all with a single voice command.
One of the key developments in Apple's AI research is the creation of Large-Language Models (LLMs), which have been in the works for the past four years. This initiative was set in motion by John Giannandrea, Apple's Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy. The company has also formed a specialized "Foundational Models" team, led by Ruoming Pang, dedicated to advancing conversational AI research.
A significant portion of Apple's substantial daily budget is allocated to training its language models, a process that demands expensive hardware. Moreover, Apple is striving to introduce an advanced version of its Shortcuts app in the upcoming iOS 18, which will empower Siri to automate complex multi-step tasks through voice commands.
In addition to these efforts, Apple's AI teams are actively engaged in developing software for generating 3D videos and images, as well as multimodal AI systems capable of processing various media formats such as images, videos, and text. Notably, Apple's internal "Apple GPT" chatbot reportedly possesses advanced capabilities and has been trained on an extensive dataset of 200 billion parameters. However, it faces competition from OpenAI's latest GPT-4 model, which is said to surpass Apple's AI capabilities.
Furthermore, Bloomberg previously reported that Apple is intensifying its AI and machine learning endeavours in anticipation of launching a consumer-facing AI product as early as next year. The company has internally developed a ChatGPT-like bot named "Apple GPT" based on its proprietary "Ajax" LLM-powered framework.
Apple's concerted efforts in the realm of conversational AI underscore its commitment to remaining at the forefront of technological innovation. As the tech industry continues to evolve rapidly, Apple's strategic investments in AI research are poised to shape the future of digital interactions and user experiences.