OpenAI’s ChatGPT definitely spooked the billion and trillion-dollar giants, forcing them to shift into overdrive mode in developing their own services so they do not get left behind in the generative AI race. The same ambition led to the creation of Apple Intelligence, and even though the Cupertino giant is lagging behind, CEO Tim Cook has said that it does not matter if the company was not the first, but what matters is that it is the best in this category. In the latest interview, the Chief Executive sits down and discusses a wide range of topics, including how helpful Apple Intelligence is and whether he contemplated investing in OpenAI.
Apple Intelligence is extremely helpful when summarizing author responses, says Tim Cook, and he mentions that he never not thought about investing in OpenAI
Talking with Steven Levy from Wired, Tim Cook was asked a plethora of questions, with the majority of them focused on generative AI and Apple Intelligence. Cook has a habit of playing around with the company’s products and services, and Apple Intelligence is no exception. When asked what the most useful feature is, the Chief Executive responds as follows.
“We’re an email-based company, and I get enormous numbers from users, employees, partners, and so forth. Having it summarize author responses is a game changer, and having it prioritize things for you so you’re not doing your usual triage. Then, of course, there are fun things like the Image Playground.”
Some may argue that Apple took a backfoot in its progress when it did not invest in OpenAI, a decision that Microsoft took seriously, which ultimately allowed the software giant to be ahead of everyone else in the generative AI space. When asked if Apple was interested in investing in OpenAI, Tim Cook says that the company never ignored the startup’s existence, but it would have been a rare move if such a decision had been made. Cook also mentions ARM, suggesting its importance in the earlier years, which eventually helped Apple reach its current heights.
“I’m not going to say we never looked at it. I’m just saying that it would be a rare move on our part to do that. We did ARM back in the day. Who else did we do? We did one or two others. ARM was pretty good.”
As far as Apple Intelligence is concerned, a multitude of efforts being made to ensure that it stands an echelon above the rest, but the end result might take a while. For instance, Apple buried the hatchet with NVIDIA and teamed up with the graphics processor maker to research a ‘ReDrafter’ technique that speeds up text generation with LLMs. The California-based titan also intends to add M4 Ultra chips to its Apple Intelligence servers for faster responses, while also working with Broadcom to co-develop an AI chip codenamed ‘Baltra’.
News Source: Wired
