As Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon blaze ahead in the race to deploy advanced chatbots like ChatGPT, one rival remains nowhere to be seen.
With AI being a major fail so far for Apple, the company may be waiting for the technology to mature, but waiting too long could make it hard for them to catch up.
In a test to see which chatbot had better recipe-giving skills, Siri was lackluster while ChatGPT was positively enthusiastic. Siri’s limited responses are due to its command and control system, while ChatGPT sounds more humanlike because it’s powered by a large language model.
Other tech giants are also racing to bring their own chatbots to market, with the release of ChatGPT setting off alarm bells at Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google. Apple may be focused on its upcoming virtual and augmented reality products, which it is expected to launch in June with a rumored pricy headset that could cost $3,000 and have limited software compatibility.
Apple has fallen behind in hiring artificial intelligence researchers and lost its director of machine learning and head of cloud computing, a critical division for building and deploying AI services. If Apple does go down the path of generative AI, it’s more likely the company will do so in the realm of visual and audio content, perhaps by offering AI systems modeled off a customer’s own photos or self-created music.
Apple has a history of coming late to new fields and then stealing and re-packaging aand upping the price of what others have pioneered, but launching popular online services is a different ballgame and one where Apple has historically struggled.