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Apple has jumped into the race to bring generative artificial intelligence to the masses, spotlighting a slew of features Monday designed to soup up the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
And in a move befitting a company known for its marketing prowess, the AI technology coming as part of free software updates later this year is being billed as “Apple Intelligence.”
Even as it tried to put its own stamp on technology’s hottest area, Apple tacitly acknowledged during its World Wide Developers Conference that it needs help catching up with companies like Microsoft and Google, which have emerged as the early leaders in AI. Apple is leaning on ChatGPT, made by the San Francisco startup OpenAI, to make its often-bumbling virtual assistant Siri smarter and more helpful.
“All of this goes beyond artificial intelligence, it’s personal intelligence, and it is the next big step for Apple,” CEO Tim Cook said.
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Siri’s optional gateway to ChatGPT will be free to all iPhone users and made available on other Apple products once the option is baked into the next generation of Apple’s operating systems. ChatGPT subscribers are supposed to be able to easily sync their existing accounts when using the iPhone, and should get more advanced features than free users would.
To herald the alliance with Apple, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sat in the front row of the packed conference, which was attended by developers from more than 60 countries.
“Together with Apple, we’re making it easier for people to benefit from what AI can offer,” Altman said in a statement.
Beyond allowing Siri to tap into ChatGPT’s storehouse of knowledge, Apple is giving its 13-year-old virtual assistant an extensive makeover designed to make it more personable and versatile, even as it currently fields about 1.5 billion queries a day.
When Apple releases free updates to the software powering the iPhone and its other products this fall, Siri will signal its presence with flashing lights along the edges of the display screen. It will be able to handle hundreds of more tasks — including chores that may require tapping into third-party devices — than it can now, based on Monday’s presentations.
Apple’s full suite of upcoming features will only work on more recent models of the iPhone, iPad and Mac because the devices require advanced processors. For instance, consumers will need last year’s iPhone 15 Pro or buy the next model coming out later this year to take full advantage of Apple’s AI package, although all the tools will work on Macs dating back to 2020 after that computer’s next operating system is installed.
The AI-packed updates coming to the next versions of Apple software are meant to enable the billions of people who use the company’s devices to get more done in less time, while also giving them access to creative tools that could liven things up. For instance, Apple will deploy AI to allow people to create emojis, dubbed “Genmojis” on the fly to fit the vibe they are trying to convey.
Apple’s goal with AI “is not to replace users, but empower them,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, told reporters. Users will also have the option of going into the device settings to turn off any AI tools they don’t want.
Monday’s showcase seemed aimed at allaying concerns Apple might be losing its edge with the advent of AI, a technology expected to be as revolutionary as the 2007 introduction of the Phone. Both Google and Samsung have already released smartphone models touting AI features as their main attractions, while Apple has been stuck in an uncharacteristically extended sales slump.
AI mania is the main reason that Nvidia, the dominant maker of the chips underlying the technology, has seen its market value rocket from about $300 billion at the end of 2022 to about $3 trillion. The meteoric rise allowed Nvidia to surpass Apple as the second most valuable company in the U.S. Earlier this year, Microsoft also eclipsed the iPhone maker on the strength of its so-far successful push into AI.
Investors didn’t seem as impressed with Apple’s AI presentation as the crowd that came to the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters to see it. Apple’s stock price dipped nearly 2% Monday.
Despite that negative reaction, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives asserted in a research note that Apple is “taking the right path.” He hailed the presentation as a “historical” day for a company that already has reshaped the tech industry and society.
Besides pulling AI tricks out of its bag, Apple also used the conference to confirm that it will be rolling out a technology called Rich Communications Service, or RCS, to its iMessage app. The technology should improve the quality and security of texting between iPhones and devices powered by Android software, such as the Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel.
The change, due out with the next version of iPhone’s operating software, won’t eliminate the blue bubbles denoting texts originating from iPhones and the green bubbles marking text sent from Android devices — a distinction that has become a source of social stigma.
In another upcoming twist to the iPhone’s messaging app, users will be able to write a text (or have an AI tool compose it) in advance and schedule a specific time to automatically send it.
Monday’s presentation marked the second straight year that Apple has created a stir at its developers conference by using it to usher in a trendy form of technology that other companies already had employed.
Last year, Apple provided an early look at its mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, which wasn’t released until early 2024. Nevertheless, Apple’s push into mixed reality — with a twist that it bills as “spatial computing” — has raised hopes that there will be more consumer interest in this niche technology.
Part of that optimism stems from Apple’s history of releasing technology later than others, then using sleek designs and slick marketing campaigns to overcome its tardy start.
Bringing more AI to the iPhone will likely raise privacy concerns — a topic that Apple has gone to great lengths to assure its loyal customers it can be trusted not to peer too deeply into their personal lives. Apple did talk extensively Monday about its efforts to build strong privacy protections and controls around its AI technology.
One way Apple is trying to convince consumers that the iPhone won’t be used to spy on them is harnessing its chip technology so most of its AI-powered features are handled on the device itself instead of at remote data centers, often called “the cloud.” Going down this route would also help protect Apple’s profit margins because AI processing through the cloud is far more expensive than when it is run solely on a device.
When Apple users make AI demands that requiring computing power beyond what’s available on the device, the tasks will be handled by what the company is calling a “private cloud” that is supposed to shield their personal data.
Apple’s AI “will be aware of your personal data without collecting your personal data,” Federighi said.
The ousted leader of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is returning to the company that fired him late last week, culminating a days-long power struggle that shocked the tech industry and brought attention to the conflicts around how to safely build artificial intelligence.
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San Francisco-based OpenAI said in a statement late Tuesday: “We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board.”
The board, which replaces the one that fired Altman on Friday, will be led by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, who also chaired Twitter’s board before its takeover by Elon Musk last year. The other members will be former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo.
OpenAI’s previous board of directors, which included D’Angelo, had refused to give specific reasons for why it fired Altman, leading to a weekend of internal conflict at the company and growing outside pressure from the startup’s investors.
The chaos also accentuated the differences between Altman — who’s become the face of generative AI’s rapid commercialization since ChatGPT’s arrival a year ago — and members of the company’s board who have expressed deep reservations about the safety risks posed by AI as it gets more advanced.
Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and has rights to its current technology, quickly moved to hire Altman on Monday, as well as another co-founder and former president, Greg Brockman, who had quit in protest after Altman’s removal. That emboldened a threatened exodus of nearly all of the startup’s 770 employees who signed a letter calling for the board’s resignation and Altman’s return.
One of the four board members who participated in Altman’s ouster, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, later expressed regret and joined the call for the board’s resignation.
Microsoft in recent days had pledged to welcome all employees who wanted to follow Altman and Brockman to a new AI research unit at the software giant. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also made clear in a series of interviews Monday that he was still open to the possibility of Altman returning to OpenAI, so long as the startup’s governance problems are solved.
“We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board,” Nadella posted on X late Tuesday. “We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance.”
In his own post, Altman said that “with the new board and (with) Satya’s support, I’m looking forward to returning to OpenAI, and building on our strong partnership with (Microsoft).”
Co-founded by Altman as a nonprofit with a mission to safely build so-called artificial general intelligence that outperforms humans and benefits humanity, OpenAI later became a for-profit business but one still run by its nonprofit board of directors. It’s not clear yet if the board’s structure will change with its newly appointed members.
“We are collaborating to figure out the details,” OpenAI posted on X. “Thank you so much for your patience through this.”
Nadella said Brockman, who was OpenAI’s board chairman until Altman’s firing, will also have a key role to play in ensuring the group “continues to thrive and build on its mission.”
Hours earlier, Brockman returned to social media as if it were business as usual, touting a feature called ChatGPT Voice that was rolling out to users.
“Give it a try — totally changes the ChatGPT experience,” Brockman wrote, flagging a post from OpenAI’s main X account that featured a demonstration of the technology and playfully winking at recent turmoil.
“It’s been a long night for the team and we’re hungry. How many 16-inch pizzas should I order for 778 people,” the person asks, using the number of people who work at OpenAI. ChatGPT’s synthetic voice responded by recommending around 195 pizzas, ensuring everyone gets three slices.
As for OpenAI’s short-lived interim CEO Emmett Shear, the second interim CEO in the days since Altman’s ouster, he posted on X that he was “deeply pleased by this result, after (tilde)72 very intense hours of work.”
“Coming into OpenAI, I wasn’t sure what the right path would be,” wrote Shear, the former head of Twitch. “This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved. I’m glad to have been a part of the solution.”
Microsoft snapped up Sam Altman and another architect of OpenAI for a new venture after their sudden departures shocked the artificial intelligence world, leaving the newly installed CEO of the ChatGPT maker to paper over tensions by vowing to investigate Altman’s firing.
The developments Monday come after a weekend of drama and speculation about how the power dynamics would shake out at OpenAI, whose chatbot kicked off the generative AI era by producing human-like text, images, video and music.
It ended with former Twitch leader Emmett Shear taking over as OpenAI’s interim chief executive and Microsoft announcing it was hiring Altman and OpenAI co-founder and former President Greg Brockman to lead Microsoft’s new advanced AI research team.
Despite the rift between the key players behind ChatGPT and the company they helped build, both Shear and Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said they are committed to their partnership.
Microsoft invested billions of dollars in the startup and helped provide the computing power to run its AI systems. Nadella wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he was “extremely excited” to bring on the former executives of OpenAI and looked “forward to getting to know” Shear and the rest of the management team.
In a reply on X, Altman said “the mission continues,” while Brockman posted, “We are going to build something new & it will be incredible.”
OpenAI said Friday that Altman was pushed out after a review found he was “not consistently candid in his communications” with the board of directors, which had lost confidence in his ability to lead the company.
In an X post Monday, Shear said he would hire an independent investigator to look into what led up to Altman’s ouster and write a report within 30 days.
“It’s clear that the process and communications around Sam’s removal has been handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust,” wrote Shear, who co-founded Twitch, an Amazon-owned livestreaming service popular with video gamers.
He said he also plans in the next month to “reform the management and leadership team in light of recent departures into an effective force” and speak with employees, investors and customers.
After that, Shear said he would “drive changes in the organization,” including “significant governance changes if necessary.” He noted that the reason behind the board removing Altman was not a “specific disagreement on safety.”
OpenAI last week declined to answer questions on what Altman’s alleged lack of candor was about. Its statement said his behavior was hindering the board’s ability to exercise its responsibilities.
An OpenAI spokeswoman didn’t immediately reply to an email Monday seeking comment. A Microsoft representative said the company would not be commenting beyond its CEO’s statement.
After Altman was pushed out Friday, he stirred speculation that he might be coming back into the fold in a series of tweets. He posted a photo of himself with an OpenAI guest pass on Sunday, saying this is “first and last time i ever wear one of these.”
Hours earlier, he tweeted, “i love the openai team so much,” which drew heart replies from Brockman, who quit after Altman was fired, and Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer who was initially named as interim CEO.
It’s not clear what transpired between the announcement of Murati’s interim role Friday and Shear’s hiring, though she was among several employees on Monday who tweeted, “OpenAI is nothing without its people.” Altman replied to many with heart emojis.
Shear said he stepped down as Twitch CEO because of the birth of his now-9-month-old son but “took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence.”
His beliefs on the future of AI came up on a podcast in June. Shear said he’s generally an optimist about technology but has serious concerns about the path of artificial intelligence toward building something “a lot smarter than us” that sets itself on a goal that endangers humans.
It’s an issue that Altman consistently faced since he helped catapult ChatGPT to global fame. In the past year, he has become Silicon Valley’s most sought-after voice on the promise and potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
He went on a world tour to meet with government officials earlier this year, drawing big crowds at public events as he discussed both the risks of AI and attempts to regulate the emerging technology.
Altman posted Friday on X that “i loved my time at openai” and later called his ouster a “weird experience.”
“If Microsoft lost Altman he could have gone to Amazon, Google, Apple, or a host of other tech companies craving to get the face of AI globally in their doors,” Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, said in a research note.
Microsoft is now in an even stronger position on AI, Ives said. Its shares rose nearly 2% before the opening bell and were nearing an all-time high Monday.
The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP’s text archives.
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