It looks like Apple will have a modular approach to AI. With some third-party components and some their own. They have and will double down on AI within apps, like selecting the subject in photos, transformer driven typing suggestions, and other app features. They will have a way to call out to a third-party, server-side GPT-style AI like ChatGPT for some functions. They will have one more more local AIs running on-d…
It makes a lot of sense for Apple to deploy hardware and small on-device LLMs as extremely overpowered “routing” modules that do basic things locally and then farm out other things to a cloud partner.
This also fits in well with OpenAI allegedly launching some sort of assistant Monday, so then Apple can point to it if it does well (and integrate it) or at the last minute fall back to Google if OpenAI flops.
I wonder if Tim Apple models the Google search deal ending in the next 2-3years, and if there’s a contingency in case chat-based interfaces flop. Given how the car got canned, it would be surprising to see Apple try to make their own GPT-5 / search engine, so the 5-7 year plan must be to remain largely dependent on Google and Microsoft (and to keep Facebook out of the party).