Apple Generative AI Features And Smart Siri Cloud To Appear in 2024

Apple is reportedly advancing its generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to introduce a smarter version of Siri, with a potential release slated for next year. According to a recent report by Mark Gurman in his “Power On” newsletter, despite Apple’s long-term engagement in generative AI technology, the sudden industry shift towards AI caught Apple’s executives by surprise, prompting them to expedite their efforts since late last year to catch up​.

As Macrumors reports, Under the supervision of John Giannandrea and Craig Federighi, significant strides are being made towards developing a smarter Siri and integrating AI into the next major iOS version. This initiative aims to introduce features running on Apple’s large language model (LLM) to enhance Siri’s interaction with the Messages app, enabling better handling of complex questions and auto-completing sentences more effectively. Besides, the integration of AI into Xcode is also being explored to aid developers in coding more rapidly, aligning it with services like Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot.

Moreover, Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, is also making efforts to incorporate AI across various Apple apps. For instance, adding AI features in Apple Music to auto-generate playlists, and in productivity apps like Pages and Keynote, to assist with writing or creating slide decks. Internally, there is an ongoing debate on whether to deploy generative AI as an on-device experience, a cloud-based setup, or a hybrid approach.

The aggressive push towards enhancing AI capabilities is reflected in Apple’s substantial investment in AI research, with an estimated spending of $1 billion per year. As part of this initiative, Apple is also said to be developing a chatbot tool dubbed “Apple GPT” to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

In conclusion, Apple’s significant investment in AI, the development of a smarter Siri, and the integration of AI across its ecosystem underscore the tech giant’s strategic shift towards embracing AI to improve user experience and stay competitive in the rapidly evolving tech landscape.