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Apple Technology

Apple Is the One Big Tech Company Without a Clear ChatGPT Strategy (bloomberg.com) 57

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The global excitement around ChatGPT, and the haste to copy it, resembles the introduction of an Apple product. Everyone is stoked to try it, and other tech companies are working late nights to reverse engineer it. This time, Apple is nowhere to be found. Has the speed of it all caught the world's most influential tech company by surprise? From a report: Microsoft has poured $10 billion into OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and reconfigured how it builds server farms to accommodate more of Nvidia's class-leading processors for training artificial intelligence. Alphabet's Google has made responding to ChatGPT a top priority. Amazon has also jumped into the fray with its cloud division. That's four of the world's top seven most valuable companies, and yet, the most valuable of them all seems to have no ready answer for what's coming. Bloomberg reported on an internal AI summit Apple held in February, when machine learning and other deployments of the tech across Apple products were discussed, but there was no hint of anything in the genre of generative AI.

AI in Apple products today is like irrigation for its walled garden, essential and helpful for an increasing number of functions, but ultimately it's the hardware fruit that Apple sells. Generative AI could come in like a tidal wave. Apple, by all appearances, squandered the lead it established since becoming the first big tech company to make an AI-powered voice assistant. Siri was clearly flawed from the start, but it looks ancient by the standards of ChatGPT. To compete in this new AI race, companies need massive, bespoke computational clusters that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Cloud services are not Apple's strongest suit right now, as its chief for that division is leaving, and iCloud has been the subject of lament in this very newsletter. The company is investing significant resources in the augmented-reality headset we expect to debut in June and the long-mooted, capital-intensive automotive initiative.
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Apple Is the One Big Tech Company Without a Clear ChatGPT Strategy More

Apple Is the One Big Tech Company Without a Clear ChatGPT Strategy

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  • Apple is a consumer device company. What does AI software(that can already be accessed on their hardware) have to do with their bottom line?
    • and they need to make sure they're not somehow squeezed out of their market segment by Microsoft and Google. Both of which are more than happy to throw their weight around as trusts.

      • Re:They're still kind of a software company (Score:5, Informative)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @07:24PM (#63460448)

        Exactly what market segment do you think they'll get pushed out of?

        Apple make hardware. Last I checked, large language models aint hardware.

        And to be clear, we don't actually know [i]what[/i] apple are doing. Apple usually doesn't advertise its plans.

        • Here's the steps they need to be worried about:
          1)Google/someone else makes cool AI
          2) said cool AI is use to power cool stuff on Android phones.
          3) It's no longer cool to own a iPhone, because they don't have the cool AI things.
          Apple's hardware is not special, not for the same price. If people don't see the devices as "cool", the market drifts away from them pretty quick.
          And remember, technology-wise companies can catch up, but *market-wise* ...first to capture a market gets a lot of advantages in growing it

      • They don't need to worry about it. MS and Google won't "cut them out" of this revolution. You'll be able to use this stuff on Apple devices. Should they? Yes, You think Apple wouldn't if they had it?

    • Apple is a consumer device company. What does AI software(that can already be accessed on their hardware) have to do with their bottom line?

      Services in the last quarter for Apple were $20.8 billion or more than 1/6th of total revenue. ChatGPT is potentially a gateway like Siri, except that it seems to work much better. Allowing ChatGPT on an iPhone to funnel requests to Microsoft services potentially has a huge impact on the top and bottom lines.

    • The sell a tightly bound Ecosphere. They need one because it is trendy now and prolly going to enhance productivety. They are kinda the fashion accesory of computing.
      Even then without modern functions and ability to compete in an always changing market. Would make them irrelevant and worse undesireable.
      They could also just use chat-gpt up to them. But then folks and their data and possibly money leave the ecosphere.

  • Because Apple Knows It's All Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sethmeisterg ( 603174 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @03:48PM (#63459922)
    Apple doesn't jump on bandwagons without clear value propositions.

    • Re:Because Apple Knows It's All Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dysmal ( 3361085 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @03:53PM (#63459934)

      They'll wait until the dust settles and then they'll buy a lower tier company for cheap and then put their name on it.

      At least Oracle isn't involved in this race... yet!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Yep, my take also.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Apple doesn't jump on bandwagons without clear value propositions.

      (Value Proposition) "Craziest shit I ever saw was this guy who pounds a round bandwagon wheel into what he called a 'rounded corners' shape, just for the art fuck of it. Even got a patent on it. Years later he yanks the headphone jack. I mean fucking literally. Gone. I'm thinking 'If removing shit is a value-add now, I'll be fired by the end of this sentence'..."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sc0t ( 10132216 )
      This isn't going to age well. .. And if Apple doesn't get their ass in gear, neither will they.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        This is a fad, not the future. Apple is busy with a completely different fad.

      • This isn't going to age well. .. And if Apple doesn't get their ass in gear, neither will they.

        Hello, old friend!

        It's been awhile since we've seen an "Apple is Doomed" meme around here!

        Apple: Proudly Going Out of Business for nearly Half a Century!

        Putz.

      • Remember that this is Slashdot, everyone here is self-described smarter than all language model developers, and with that greater intelligence have also determined that language models are and will forever be useless (if we ignore that they've already providen to be extremely useful in a bunch of scenarios, and the rate of improvement is extradionary).

        I wont say that Apple will go out of business if they don't leverage this technology for Siri or something similar, but I agree that Apple's lack of AI relate

  • Apple generally plays their cards closer to their vest than competitors. The tend to not make it clear what they are doing until they've pretty much done it.

    Apple is, further, centered on products directly provided to endusers. The vast majority of 'ChatGPT' strateggy spend cited all involve providing services to others to make products, in theory. Probably the biggest direct investment is around augmenting search engines, which Apple doesn't do in-house anyway.

    Currently, it's a big in the hype cycle, so

  • They have little need for fanfare (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @03:54PM (#63459942)

    Apple aren't competing in search, they throw google a bone. Apple aren't competing in word processing, they throw Microsoft a bone. Assistants can use better AI, but for everyone except Apple it's hard to monetise assistants, competitors will be loathe to throw a ton of money at it ... so no need to hurry.

    They are working behind the scenes, see Attention Free Transformer, they have no need to be ostentatious. Attention based transformers could very well turn out to be a very expensive boondoggle, with language models orders of magnitude cheaper to train and run soon coming.

  • Because they have to teach it rounded corners (Score:3)

    by Growlley ( 6732614 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @03:58PM (#63459950)
    Then pretend they invented it first!

  • Siri does suck, but (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @03:59PM (#63459952)

    I can't say I've ever heard of her presenting flat-out lies as facts, unlike ChatGPT.

    Also, Apple didn't make Siri - Apple bought Siri. Perhaps the Bloomberg blogger got that wrong because it asked ChatGPT about it?

    • I asked ChatGPT-4 if Apple created Siri. This was the response:

      Apple did not create Siri in-house. They acquired Siri through the purchase of a company called Siri, Inc. in April 2010. Siri, Inc. had developed a personal assistant app for iOS devices, which caught Apple's attention. After acquiring the company, Apple integrated the Siri technology into its products, starting with the iPhone 4S in October 2011. Since then, Siri has become a key feature of many Apple devices, including the iPad, iPod Touch, A

  • Timing is Key (Score:5, Interesting)

    by El Fantasmo ( 1057616 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @04:00PM (#63459960)

    After half the industry is doing it for a few years and struggling to sell their wares with it, Apple will announce the are putting AI in iOS, watchOS etc. at WWDC and be hailed innovative and courageous, leading to millions of new sales.

    Am I being a bit snarky with my comment? Yes, but I also believe that's how it will happen.

    • I could see it.

      Apple doesn't innovate on technology. Instead they incorporate reasonably mature technology into a well-polished final product that makes everyone realize just how crude and clunky everyone else's implementations are.

      At least they used to - can't say I've seen anything new and polished out of Apple since Jobs passed. They're still riding on their reputation as a premium device maker, but at this point everyone else has mostly caught up with them, while they've failed to move the goal posts

  • I have no doubt there is a great deal of research being done to integrate AI into Apple products. They just are better and shutting up about it.

  • Apple SoCs have included neural engines since 2017 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @04:15PM (#63459986)

    https://www.macobserver.com/ti... [macobserver.com]

    As the current generation of AI products becomes better defined, Apple will be hardware-ready to implement the winner.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DogFoodBuss ( 9006703 )
      Even without the Neural Engine, people are finding that Apple Silicon is uniquely suited to running large language models - they tend to be limited more by memory bandwidth than compute, which the M1 and M2 architectures have in spades. Just look at the benchmarks for the llama.cpp project - in the PC world, you need thousands of dollars worth of GPUs just to keep up. I doubt Apple will let this advantage go to waste.

  • Who says they haven't already.... (Score:3)

    by GregMmm ( 5115215 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @04:19PM (#63460006)

    And didn't tell anyone.

  • Style Sheets (Score:1, Funny)

    by The Cat ( 19816 )

    All I know is ChatGPT can occasionally center something with CSS. We've been waiting to get that working for about 27 fucking years.

  • Chat GPT (Score:3)

    by jdawgnoonan ( 718294 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @04:29PM (#63460048)
    Most of the people really excited by Chat GPT work in the tech press. Microsoft is hoping that they can use this to make their search products finally gain some market share and perhaps finally initiate some excitement in the Kleenex of desktop operating systems (Windows).

  • Oh, there's a strategy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @04:52PM (#63460116) Journal

    Diamond Rio September 1998. [wikipedia.org]. Ipod? October 2001. [wikipedia.org].

    There were MP3 players before the Rio, but the Rio made money. Apple gave it the "Apple touch", with a wheel and fanboys.

    The Apple strategy has always been to take ideas and monetize them better. Taking ideas from Xerox was probably their biggest coup..

    Maybe the first movers can make money, but can they make Apple money? Pioneers get shot. Settlers get land. Apple is a settler.

  • I believe the headline isn't a flat-out lie, it's a misunderstanding of how a company as large as Apple has no need to throw around the buzzwords on the up-swing of a new fad. I can guarantee you there is, at a minimum, a department dedicated to studying, analyzing, perhaps reimagining, and definitely trying to come up with alternatives to ChatGPT. No company that size would ignore a building buzz like this outright, but a semi-intelligent company, which I think on the whole we can still say Apple is, may j

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      No company that size would ignore a building buzz like this outright, but a semi-intelligent company, which I think on the whole we can still say Apple is, may just bide its time during this build-up, everybody's going crazy and throwing products out as fast as they possibly can phase, and waiting. They probably have a strategy developed that will involved watching some competitors step in, probably screw up the first few iterations, then they'll come out with their somewhat shinier, somewhat more "OH MY" v

      • Nobody knows what to do with it. Maybe waiting to see what happens is better than just tossing a bunch of ideas at it and hope something works.

        While I absolutely agree with this strategy, Apple has the resources to do both and probably is internally. I guarantee you there's some idea men trying to come up with the reason ChatGPT can be useful inside that spaceship campus right now. To not have somebody doing that, with the available resources of a company as large as Apple, would be almost as glaring a mistake as trying to roll it into a product ready for market today.

        This is why Apple is as big as it is. For all its mistakes, when it comes to new

  • Hmmm⦠(Score:3)

    by jpellino ( 202698 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @06:08PM (#63460268)

    Seems they were late to mp3 players, late to phones, seems they were nowhere to be found with tablets, I sense a pattern here.

  • it is very meh. let the others throw billions at the fad.

    • GPT 3.5 is pretty meh, but 4 is much much better. I use it every day, sometimes for work, sometimes just to learn. It is almost as invaluable as my phone now.

      I also use Bard and rarely GPT in Edge. These things are useful if you know to prompt them.

  • Apple wasn't the first kid on the block with an MP3 player nor were they the first one with a "smart" phone. After they released the iPod and the iPhone, everything else that was on the market was quickly forgotten. They've learned many a lesson by trying to be the first to do something only to have their lunch money stolen. Right now, if you REALLY try to do useful things with AI, the results are often total crap. It can't handle things that it should easily be able to do and it tends to have a lot of

    • They have never been the first to market in any product category since the beginning of the company. PCs were already a very well established category when the Macintosh was introduced, and IBM and others had already brought various microcomputers to market when the Apple 1 was created.

      Being second to market with a more refined product has served them well for decades.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Apple is hardly ever the first one to a market, but when they focus on it, they usually disrupt it once they figure it out.

    There were MP3 players, they came with the iPod and turned the market upside down.

    Everyone was building cellphones, there were blackberries, they came up with the iPhone and did it again.

    You could install software on cellphones (JME, etc.), they released the app store, another massive disruption

    Tablets, music, etc. I wouldn't count them out of the game yet, it's way too soon.

  • They are beginning to realize that. I can only laugh, as I read their epitaph. They end their lives as moles, in the dark of the dawn patrol.

  • Apple also didn't chase the blockchain/crypto/NFT or metaverse fads.

    And, you seem to think that's a bad thing?
  • people going nuts over Markov chains again? yeah, now they are trained on responses, but in the end it's just a bunch of approximate nonsense.

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