Apple scrambles to find footing in artificial intelligence race

ISTANBUL

Apple is lagging behind Google and OpenAI in the artificial intelligence (AI) race, despite being one of the world’s leading tech companies, while major competitors like Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi have released their own systems.

Apple is offering its “Apple Intelligence” AI system with the support of ChatGPT and Google Gemini, while competitors develop their own systems -- it is unclear if Apple will share Nokia’s fate in the rapidly evolving market by falling into obscurity and behind in the ever-ramping AI race.

Apple started its AI journey way ahead of other companies with the acquisition of Siri in 2010 and the integration of the voice assistant in the iPhone in 2011.

While Siri made a major splash in the tech world, Google accelerated its efforts and launched Google Assistant and Amazon released Alexa. The systems quickly surpassed Siri due to their more open nature to third parties, while Apple gatekept Siri to Apple products only.

Apple acquired many small AI startups, while Google’s acquisition of DeepMind brought the firm a much-needed edge against the iPhone-maker.

Apple made a notable move by hiring Google’s chief of AI, John Giannandrea, to lead its machine learning strategy in 2018, but Google’s unlimited data capabilities and AI-first approach prevented Apple’s new AI head from making great strides, as Apple’s focus on privacy and using limited data hindered its AI advancements.

As generative AI emerged in the 2020s and officially marked the beginning of the AI era, capable products like Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, X’s Grok, and China’s DeepSeek came to the fore.

Apple lost many workers in its AI units to competitors, especially in 2023 and beyond, including engineers and senior executives, according to a Bloomberg report.

Following the developments, Apple changed gears and made more public announcements about its AI plans at its annual WWDC 2023 developer conference.

Apple continued efforts to boost its presence in the AI business, renaming its AI program as Apple Intelligence and placing it at the forefront of WWDC 2024.

The company had already begun talks with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Siri by the end of 2024, according to a Reuters report.

ChatGPT started serving Apple users via Siri with user consent. While Siri can answer questions on its own with on-device capabilities, it refers to ChatGPT when presented with more complex inquiries.

Apple’s most recent step in its AI journey was the Gemini deal -- Apple agreed to pay around $1 billion per year to access Google’s Gemini models.

Apple’s partnerships with OpenAI and Google came under fire as the iPhone-maker was criticized for relying on competitors to stay competitive in the ever-evolving market. Meanwhile, the anticipation is high for the new Siri model that is planned to be unveiled next year.