Apple and OpenAI allegedly reach deal to bring ChatGPT functionality to iOS 18

Apple and OpenAI could bring ChatGPT functionality to Siri

According to a report, a deal has finally been struck between OpenAI and Apple. The details of the deal aren’t known, but it likely means technologies used for ChatGPT could be accessible by Apple users, namely through Siri.

Internal politics are the likely driver of this compromise, as the report shared that Apple’s Senior Vice President Machine Learning and AI Strategy, John Giannandrea, said in an email in 2023 that “the last thing people needed was another chatbot.” So, either Apple didn’t bother with a server-side LLM or they started too late and it isn’t ready.

Whatever the case, if this report is true, Apple likely won’t be announcing an Apple-made LLM to replace Siri. Instead, it will use server-side products like ChatGPT to answer user questions.

For example, today if you ask Siri something that would require a search, Siri sends a search query to Google using an anonymous identifier. OpenAI could have a similar option for users where queries requiring AI would pass information to ChatGPT in a privacy-preserving way and return a useful answer read by Siri.