Apple confirms ChatGPT-like features coming to iPhone amid rumours of ‘biggest ever’ update

Apple purportedly spends $1 billion on AI every year — and it's starting to sound like 2024 will finally be the year that we see the results of that huge spending

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Aaron Brown

By Aaron Brown


Published: 06/02/2024

- 05:30

Updated: 23/03/2024

- 08:58

Expect new AI tricks in Messages, Pages, and Apple Music, sources claim

  • Apple CEO Tim Cook has confirmed AI features will launch this year
  • He says AI will be "a huge opportunity" for Apple
  • Apple tipsters claim ChatGPT-like update to Siri coming with iOS 18
  • New software update could be announced in months

Apple is gearing-up to launch generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) features on its best-selling devices “later this year”, CEO Tim Cook has confirmed.

Apple is hugely secretive and rarely hints at future announcements, so the admission from Tim Cook that AI features are on the way is unusual. The 63-year-old executive made the comments to shareholders following the US firm’s latest financial results. The announcement adds weight to recent rumours that the next version of iiOS update will be the biggest in years.

Cook said the iPhone maker was spending a “tremendous amount of time and effort” on AI and would share more details of that work later in the year. Apple usually holds its annual developer conference, known as WWDC, in June, while new iPhones are typically announced in September.

It’s possible we’ll hear more details about the upcoming advances in AI, which Tim Cook teased would be “a huge opportunity for Apple”, at these events.

three iPhones are shown side-by-side with a different aspect of iOS 17 software on each screen

iOS 17, the latest major iteration of the iPhone operating system, brought the ability to customise your contact photo on any iPhone when you make a call, added stickers across chat apps, and enabled live transcription of incoming voicemails — so you can decide whether to pick-up or not at a glance

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Several of Apple’s biggest rivals have made a series of announcements around generative AI – Samsung and Google have made the technology a key component in their latest phone launches – while Google has also followed Microsoft and introduced a chatbot or virtual assistant to their computing platforms in the wake of the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

“As we look ahead, we will continue to invest in these and other technologies that shape our future. That includes AI, where we continue to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort and we’re excited to share details of our ongoing work in that space later this year,” Tim Cook told investors.

The Apple boss, who has worked at the company for almost 26 years, refused to give any further details but did confirm he was speaking about generative AI.

“Let me just say that I think there’s a huge opportunity for Apple with generative AI and with AI, without getting into many more details or getting out ahead of myself.”

Generative AI is a growing category of artificial intelligence that involves building models capable of producing new and original content. While traditional AI systems rely on explicit programming, generative AI can dream-up new images, paragraphs of text, or music.

To do this, the AI model is trained on a vast amount of data — from books to online articles. OpenAI trained ChatGPT with billions of publicly-availablewebpages as well as information licensed from third-parties. By crawling thousands of articles, dictionary definitions, and academic papers, the AI is able to mimic human language and regurgitate facts.

The hint of generative AI from Tim Cook comes just a few days after reports from Bloomberg that the next version of Apple’s iPhone software – iOS 18 – which is due to be announced later this year, could be one of the biggest updates in the operating system’s history.

Apple is purportedly spending $1 billion every year on AI development. Siri, the chatty AI assistant built into every iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, Apple TV, and iPad, looks set to be the biggest benefactor of that colossal spend.

According to leakster Revegnus on X, formerly Twitter, Apple is using a new large language model “to completely revamp Siri into the ultimate virtual assistant and is preparing to develop it into Apple's most powerful killer AI app.

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“This integrated development effort is actively underway, and the first product is expected to be unveiled at WWDC 2024, with plans for it to be standard on the iPhone 16 models and onwards,” the tipster adds.

Messages, Apple Music, and Pages are also expected to be supercharged with new AI tricks.

One of Apple’s biggest smartphone rivals, Samsung, released their latest flagship devices this week, complete with a wide range of generative AI-powered features, including translation and transcription tools, as well as new photo editing capabilities. Google has made similar AI-powered tools a key selling point of its Pixel smartphone range in recent years.

In its latest financial results, Apple reported revenue of 119.58 billion dollars (£93.74 billion), up 2% on the same three-month period last year.

Additional Reporting By Martyn Landi, PA Technology Correspondent

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