According to foreign media news, Apple is developing ChatGPT-like products internally to compete with technology giants such as Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, and Meta on the generative AI track. The news sent Apple shares up 2%. According to Apple engineers, Apple built a large language model development framework code-named "Ajax" internally, and built a generative AI chat robot "Apple GPT".
According to foreign media reports, Ajax runs on Google Cloud and is built by Google's machine learning framework Google JAX. Due to security concerns, Apple GPT was suspended internally for a period of time and is now only available to a small number of Apple employees.
Apple GPT has technical features such as summarizing text and answering questions based on trained data, and some employees are developing product prototypes through it. As one of the technology companies with the highest market value in the world, Apple has always been cautious and low-key about generative AI such as ChatGPT. Apple CEO Cook once said that ChatGPT is very interesting, but it needs careful consideration in application.
But seeing that the fire of generative AI is getting more and more prosperous, and the functions of smart assistants such as Siri have been stagnant, so they began to join the competition on this track.
In fact, as early as May of this year, Apple has begun to recruit a large number of talents related to generative AI. The positions include: generative AI research scientist, generative AI application researcher, generative AI machine learning engineer, visual generative modeler , multimodal engineer, NLP product manager, etc.
According to statistics, from the beginning of May to the present, Apple has increased more than 20 jobs related to generative AI.
For security reasons, Apple has banned employees from using ChatGPT or other similar products to prevent sensitive data from being leaked.
Apple wants to join the upsurge of generative AI applications represented by ChatGPT, but is afraid of leaking core sensitive data, so self-research is one of the best paths.
Microsoft and OpenAI have also begun to generate data specifically for training AI. According to the Financial Times, Microsoft, OpenAI, and AI startup Cohere have begun to generate data specifically for training AI. Previously, whether it was GPT or Bard, these large models were basically trained with data on the Internet, such as web pages, forum information, videos or e-books.
ChatGPT is a model developed by OpenAI, and Apple is working on something similar, which they may customize and optimize for their own needs and goals. Such products may be used to provide a more intelligent and personalized conversation experience, but the specific situation still needs to wait for Apple's official announcement.
In addition, the emergence of ChatGPT makes Apple's proud voice assistant Siri look a bit "stupid", and there is a big gap with ChatGPT in terms of user intent recognition and task execution. Therefore, enhancing Siri functions through generative AI is a good choice for Apple.