Apple, the tech giant known for its innovative consumer electronics like the recently announced Apple Vision Pro glasses, is reportedly carving out its niche in the arena of AI chatbots. According to Bloomberg, Apple is developing "Ajax," its own generative AI chatbot, signaling its entry into the AI chatbot landscape currently dominated by players like OpenAI and its GPT models and Meta with e.g. its recently released LLama 2 open-source LLM.
Ajax, referred to as "AppleGPT" by engineers, is being built using Google's JAX, an open-source high-performance machine learning library, and operates on Google Cloud. The effort involves multiple teams, with particular attention being devoted to privacy, a core Apple principle. The initiative is being led by John Giannandrea, a former AI head at Google, and Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi.
The development of Ajax comes as Apple's Siri has been receiving criticism for lagging behind other AI counterparts. With this new chatbot, Apple could potentially ramp up its efforts in AI and enhance its position in the industry.
However, Apple has been somewhat enigmatic about its exact plans for Ajax. While the development of the chatbot is confirmed, there are no concrete plans for a public release as of now. Despite this, anonymous sources suggest we can anticipate an official announcement, with more details next year.
Apple's entry into the generative AI space arrives amidst an escalating AI war among tech giants, including Google, Meta (formerly Facebook), and Microsoft. These companies have been quick off the mark to launch generative AI products for commercial usage. Most recently, Meta and Microsoft announced the release of Llama 2, an AI chatbot tailored for commercial use.
Apple's development of Ajax follows CEO Tim Cook's recent interview statement that the company is closely monitoring the AI sector. Furthermore, Cook highlighted several issues that need to be tackled in AI during a recent earnings call.
While Ajax is not available to Apple's workers, reports suggest that the chatbot is being used internally by engineers, indicating the possible usage of Ajax as a standard in-house toolset in the future.
Tech enthusiasts and industry watchers are eagerly anticipating what could be the next significant evolution in AI chatbots. Can Apple pull off some magic once again? We'll have to wait and see! Stay tuned and follow me for more updates on this exciting development.
Source: theverge
Login with Google