Apple Just Announced That It’s Partnering With OpenAI

Apple and OpenAI are officially business partners.

At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, the company announced an expansive partnership to bring ChatGPT to Apple’s family of devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and Macbook. The chatbot will be integrated with Siri and Apple’s writing tools, like Notes and Pages.

At the event, Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi introduced Apple Intelligence as the tech giant’s entry into the competitive genAI field. Apple Intelligence allows you to harness the power of genAI to instantly write replies to emails and texts in your own writing style, edit photos, or do things like create custom emojis of yourself and your friends. 

Federighi demonstrated how ChatGPT can be used in Apple’s official writing tools to create a draft for a document and then create images informed by the AI-generated text. The Apple exec noted that anyone will be able to access to ChatGPT features without needing an OpenAI account, and that ChatGPT subscribers will be able to log in and get access to paid features directly through their Apple devices.

One of the most unique aspects of Apple’s AI approach is that its models run fully on-device, without needing to connect to the cloud. To fit these models onto a phone, their knowledge base is significantly less comprehensive than larger models like ChatGPT. So to make up for the on-device model’s lack of world knowledge and lower processing power, Siri can call upon ChatGPT for an assist. In an example, Federighi showed a person sharing a photo of their unfurnished backyard deck with Siri in order to get decorating advice, while in another, someone asked Siri for a recipe that could be made for a specific combination of ingredients. In those instances, Siri will ask for permission to use ChatGPT to get a better answer.

In a statement, OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman said that the Apple partnership “aligns with OpenAI’s mission to make advanced AI accessible to everyone. Together with Apple, we’re making it easier for people to benefit from what AI can offer.” Federighi said Apple intends to add support for other AI models in the future.