While rival companies Microsoft, Google, and Meta have all rolled out their own versions of AI chatbots following the successful launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT last autumn, Apple has been conspicuous by its absence.
According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman – a reliable source for Apple leaks – the company is carrying out internal testing on its own chatbot, referred to by Apple engineers as “Apple GPT.”
According to the report the Apple chatbot is likely to use generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs), a technique that relies on the use of large language models (LLMs) and which is also the origin of ChatGPT’s name.
Apple’s AI uses a large language model reportedly called “Ajax,” that runs on Google Cloud using Google’s Jax machine learning framework, Digital Trends reported.
The chatbot’s longer development time is typical of Apple’s road-to-market strategy, with the company often taking longer to produce its own version of new technologies which often end up being the benchmark for the new tech.
A recent example is the Apple Vision Pro, the company’s mixed reality headset which came out earlier this year several years after its competitors had already launched their own AR/VR headsets.