June’s Apple Worldwide Developer Conference will have a big focus on artificial intelligence. However, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple might not debut a ChatGPT-like chatbot as many have anticipated.
Instead, he repeated previous reports that Apple is talking with companies such as Google, OpenAI, and Baidu about potential generative AI partnerships. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be chatbots available, though. The company may also be gearing up to announce an AI-based App Store at WWDC, according to analysts.
On February 23, MacRumors reported that Apple is internally testing a new ChatGPT-like generative AI tool that will enable employees to offer faster technical support going forward. The article says the pilot program provides select AppleCare support advisors with access to a new tool called “Ask” that can automatically generate responses to technical questions they receive from customers. Advisors can then relay the info to customers in online chats or on the phone.
MacRumors says”Ask” will automatically respond to a query with relevant information from Apple’s internal knowledge base, and advisors can rate an answer as “helpful” or “unhelpful.” Advisors can ask up to five follow-up questions per topic. Apple said it plans to make the tool available to more advisors in the future, after collecting feedback.
This seems to be part of Apple’s surging efforts in AI. On February 14 Apple announced a new artificial intelligence tool dubbed Apple Keyframes that can enable anyone to create animations.
On February 7, Apple released a new open-source AI model, called “MGIE,” that can edit images based on natural language instructions. MGIE, which stands for MLLM-Guided Image Editing, leverages multimodal large language models (MLLMs) to interpret user commands and perform pixel-level manipulations.
And in an October 2023 Power On” newsletter, Gurman said that “one of the most intense and widespread endeavors at Apple Inc. right now is its effort to respond to the AI frenzy sweeping the technology industry.”
He said that, as noted before, the company built its own large language model called Ajax and rolled out an internal chatbot dubbed “Apple GPT” to test out the functionality. The critical next step is determining if the technology is up to snuff with the competition and how Apple will actually apply it to its products, according to Gurman.
