• Apple is actively developing an in-house ChatGPT-like chatbot, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
• It is called “Ajax” and was built using Google technology.
• Apple employees are using the chatbot internally already, mostly for product prototyping.

In the first half of 2023, the largest tech companies in the world have been adopting generative AI, the innovation that powers the ChatGPT chatbot, in the hopes of capitalising on the momentum created by OpenAI and a cresting wave of millions looking to simplify tasks and activities.

Now electronics manufacturer Apple is joining the likes of Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Grammarly, WordPress, Alibaba and more, in developing a ChatGPT-like tool. This is according to Bloomberg’s Apple insider Mark Gurman, who says that Apple engineers have built an AI framework called “Ajax” which will be used to create the large language model (LLM) of an in-house chatbot.

LLMs are huge repositories of data and algorithms used to generate content in a way that simulates a human being’s thinking.

“Ajax,” named after the mythological Greek king, apparently runs on Google Cloud and was built with Google’s machine learning framework, Google JAX. It seems Ajax will be used internally at Apple and some employees are already chatting with the AI bot.

Product prototyping is what the chatbot is being used for mainly at Apple. The bot can also be used to summarise text and can answer questions based on data it has been trained with.

Gurman says that this has been in the works for a while, but Apple paused development on Ajax for a while due to security concerns around AI. However development has ramped up and the software is useable but requires “special” permissions.

In May, TechCrunch reported that Apple was actively hiring for the development of a generative AI chatbot. At that time it posted at least a dozen ads looking for engineers that were “passionate about building extraordinary autonomous systems.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook famously said “Of course I use it” when asked if he has dabbled in ChatGPT. He has said that generative AI technologies show enormous promise but that he worries about unregulated, uncontrolled development of AI and that ills like misinformation and bias are still rife with the tech.

While the Ajax chatbot remains internal at Apple, further development could see the LLM applied to consumer software like Siri. Samsung is already looking at applying generative AI to its Bixby voice assistant.

[Image – Photo by Laurenz Heymann on Unsplash]