As the virtues of generative algorithms for more and more things become apparent, we are seeing the extent to which companies are taking care not to be left behind, in what is becoming a veritable gusher of developments and integrations everywhere.
It seems that Apple, which was not talked about at all during the boom that marked the release of generative algorithms such as ChatGPT and others, is putting forward a grand plan to be able to offer generative algorithms incorporated into all its products and services, from making Siri minimally intelligent to making playlists in Apple Music, to absolutely anything.
The plan, led by top executives such as John Giannandrea and Craig Federighi, is not simply to talk about OpenAI and the incorporation of generative algorithm features into products from companies such as Microsoft or Google, recognizing that, in many ways, the features they are able to offer could make a difference for users. Thus, the company has been working since last July on the development of Ajax, known internally as Apple GPT, which is nothing more than its own massive language model or LLM, with an anticipated cost of more than one billion dollars per year, and which would serve as a new and improved version of the already old and very imperfect Siri.
Given the integration of Siri within the company’s entire line of products and services, a new version with generative capabilities could serve to provide a strong boost that would avoid the impression of a company lagging behind in this regard. In addition, Apple would also be thinking of improving all the text autocompletion features in all its products, and even of incorporating generative development features of the type that exist in Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot into products such as Xcode, which would make life easier for developers so that they could improve their productivity when creating applications in this environment.
We would also see the incorporation of generative features to other products and services: from playlists in Apple Music – something that Spotify has been offering since the beginning of this year – to text, formula or presentation generators in programs such as Pages, Numbers or Keynote, in the style of what Microsoft and Google offer in their productivity suites.
An interesting discussion is to what extent the company should try to provide solutions from the devices themselves, which would help provide faster responses and safeguard the privacy promises the company gives to its users, or turn to the cloud, which would enable more sophisticated features and less constrained by the power of those devices, perhaps leading it to consider the mixed approach generally adopted by other competitors. But one way or another, the company is clear that this is an area in which it cannot under any circumstances be left behind, and that it also has margins much higher than those of its competitors that would allow it to cover the higher operating costs derived from the use of this type of algorithms.