Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) came and went this year, with the Big Fruit Company skating over the lack of AI innovation. It instead focused on an inconsequential refresh of its design language, leaving many to ponder what the hold-up was. A new report from Bloomberg seems to cement the notion that Apple is struggling internally, prompting it to seek help from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.
Rough going for Siri
Well-known Apple sleuth Mark Gurman reports that Apple has already approached both OpenAI and Anthropic, two major players in the AI industry, asking to use their large language models to help build the AI-powered Siri that the company promised to customers more than a year ago. That… wouldn’t be a good look for Apple, which has so far built its existing Apple Intelligence features on its own ‘Foundation Models’.
While this could prove to be a potentially embarrassing and costly measure, it’s probably the right move if the company hopes to have a functional product out sooner rather than later. Apple’s shares rose by 2% after Bloomberg first reported on the deliberations, indicating some increased confidence in the iPhone maker.
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According to sources familiar with the matter, Apple is still undecided on its moves going forward, and the talks with the two AI companies are still in the early stages. The company has yet to officially shutter its own ‘LLM Siri’ project as it’s known internally, and remains in active development at the time of writing.
Were Tim Cook to go the third-party route, it appears as though it’s leaning toward Anthropic’s Claude tech to power the AI assistant. After Mike Rockwell assumed the role of Siri chief, he reportedly tasked his team with researching whether its internal AI models were better at handling queries than the competition. After “multiple rounds of testing,” Anthropic’s tech was deemed the most suitable candidate.
