A report suggests that Apple is still looking across the spectrum of AI providers for iOS 18, with OpenAi again in conversations with the iPhone maker.
There’s not a lot to Friday’s report from Bloomberg that hasn’t already been discussed. The key point from it, is that discussions have started again, or are perhaps continuing with OpenAI for potential inclusion in iOS 18, somehow.
Previous rumors made it clear that Apple had discussions with OpenAI. Friday’s report says that the technology could make it to iOS 18 in the form of a chatbot. Whether this is to supplement or replace Siri, isn’t clear.
If the report is accurate, OpenAI is not the only generative tech that Apple is considering integrating. Rumors suggest Apple is in talks with Google to provide iOS 18 users access to Gemini, somehow.
A different but related rumor suggests Apple is working to offer an AI App Store. Customers could go to the App Store to pay for access to premium AI features like Gemini search or other Google-provided AI tools.
All of these rumors may be separate, but they seem to be related to Apple’s overall strategy. The company is clearly planning to offer smaller on-device models while outsourcing LLMs to bigger existing companies like Google.
As with any of these rumors surrounding Apple’s AI plans, it’s best to take them with a grain of salt. Apple hired AI and search maven John Giannandrea six years ago. And, that hiring was after eight years at Google developing machine learning for the search engine giant.
It seems improbable that the high-powered executive’s efforts will lead to Apple licensing a competing technology, and not delivering any of its own. The company has, in fact, delivered much to the AI research community over the last several years, with the most recent being a series of models designed to be run on-device instead of in a server farm.
