On Thursday, Apple held an earnings call to discuss the company’s financial results for Q4 2023. During the call, Harsh Kumar, Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler asked Apple CEO, Tim Cook, about the tech giant’s “efforts” towards generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Answering that question, Tim revealed many interesting details, including how Apple is already using AI in its products, the company’s approach towards the technology, and more importantly, he confirmed that Apple is working on GenAI.
According to Tim, Apple views artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) as “fundamental technologies,” and they are “integral to virtually every product” that the company ships. He reminded people that a few features in the recently released iOS 17 operating system already use AI and ML, such as Personal Voice and Live Voicemail. According to him, Apple doesn’t label these features to be powered by AI and ML. Instead, it markets these features “as to what their consumer benefit is.”
Apple to take a responsible approach towards GenAI
Coming to GenAI, Tim confirmed that Apple is working on the technology and investing heavily in it. Furthermore, he said that the tech giant is “going to do it responsibly,” suggesting that GenAI, if used irresponsibly and/or not controlled, could do a lot of harm. According to Tim, people will see GenAI in the tech giant’s upcoming products. However, he refrained from revealing more details about it.
“In terms of generative AI, we have — obviously, we have work going on. I'm not going to get into details about what it is, because — as you know, we don't — we really don't do that. But you can bet that we're investing, we're investing quite a bit, we're going to do it responsibly and it will — you will see product advancements over time that where the — those technologies are at the heart of them.”
Going by this statement, Apple is working on GenAI contrary to what people have been thinking. However, the company is taking a different approach towards the technology where it is focusing on using GenAI to bring new features that are useful to people in various ways instead of implementing it in voice assistant straightaway like everyone else. That being said, we might see GenAI being implemented in Siri down the line. Speaking of which, Elon Musk’s xAI recently launched Gork, the company’s first GenAI-based chatbot.
