With the release of Apple’s VisionPro today, it’s already been a year of huge technological leaps for the tech giant.
But CEO Tim Cook has now confirmed that 2024 could have an even bigger surprise in store, after teasing a big announcement about artificial intelligence (AI).
While Apple’s products already include some machine learning features, they have yet to produce an AI product that can rival ChatGPT.
But now the Apple boss has revealed that Apple will share details of their “ongoing work” in AI ‘later this year’.
Cook wouldn’t reveal exact details about what AI features might be coming, but said, “We have a number of things that we’re incredibly excited about.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook (pictured) says the tech giant will make a big announcement about new AI features sometime in the next year
Speaking on Apple’s quarterly earnings report on Thursday, Tim Cook said: ‘As we look ahead, we will continue to invest in these and other technologies that will shape the future.
“That includes artificial intelligence, 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 area later this year.”
OpenAI’s hugely successful ChatGPT product and Google’s Bard are examples of ‘generative AI’: AI that can produce content including text, images, video or audio.
Since late 2022, ChatGPT’s success has led to generative AI receiving significant attention from technology companies and investors.
Other tech giants have jumped on the trend, pouring large amounts of money into AI partnerships to bring their own models to market in record time.
Apple has yet to expand into generative AI with a new product, but Tim Cook says the company has put a “tremendous amount of time and effort” into developing AI (stock image)
Microsoft in particular has invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI, the startup behind Chat GPT.
Apple already uses some machine learning in its chips and devices, including the technology that allows your iPhone to recognize images of dogs and people in your gallery.
But so far, Apple hasn’t joined its rivals in unveiling generative AI products or features.
It’s unusual for Apple to make announcements in advance, potentially hinting at something big in the pipeline.
But Tim Cook has remained coy on the details of what exactly the iPhone makers are planning.
Microsoft, unlike Apple, has already been very open about its investment and partnership with OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT. Microsoft has invested more than $10 billion in the startup since 2019
When pressed by analysts for more information, Cook responded: “Our MO (mission objective), if you will, has always been to do work and then talk about work, not to speak out for ourselves.
‘And so we are going to stick to that here. But we have some things we’re really excited about that we’ll talk about later this year.”
In his closing remarks on the call, Cook added: “Let me just say that I think there is a huge opportunity for Apple with generative AI and with AI, without going into much more detail or getting ahead of ourselves.”
But despite the lack of buzz, Apple is making steady progress in laying the framework for a major AI shift.
In October last year, Apple unveiled the new series of M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips.
These new chips are not only lightning fast, but also contain a faster ‘neural engine’, Apple’s special hardware set for processing machine learning models.
Apple’s new range of M3 chips all feature a new super-fast Neural Engine specifically designed to power the machine learning models that power AI
AI, especially generative AI, requires a lot of energy and computing power.
But Apple’s custom hardware might just give their technology an edge when it comes to running some models locally instead of through the cloud.
Similarly, last year Apple quietly released a new large language model (LLM), the kind of model that underpins generative AI, in collaboration with Columbia University.
This open source model, called Ferret, is free to use and allows users to select an area of an image and identify objects in that area.
However, there is no indication that the announcements teased by Tim Cook will have anything to do with the Ferret model.
MailOnline has contacted Apple for comment.