Ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June — where AI is predicted to be a big talking point — Apple is reportedly intensifying its talks with OpenAI, according to Bloomberg.
As Mashable has previously noted, Apple has been talking to several big AI companies in pursuit of a potential partnership for on-device chatbot capabilities. According to Bloomberg, Apple and OpenAI discussed a potential deal earlier this year. Those talks have since reopened, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The possible agreement could be about OpenAI integrations into iOS 18.
No deal has been currently reached, however. It seems that Apple may be deciding whether to partner with another company to bring chatbot features to its devices. Apple is also in talks with Google about bringing the latter’s Gemini to iPhone.
New research hints that Apple is working on an AI upgrade to Siri as well. As Mashable’s Cecily Mauran reported, Apple researchers are working on a model that would better understand context of what’s on screen and running in the background of a device than ChatGPT currently can. It would also better understand conversational context. This would all be on device, a shift in the current state of large language models (LLMs) that are cloud-based, because they require a lot of computing power.
Whatever Apple’s plans are, we may not hear what’s coming until WWDC.