OpenAI is reportedly helping Apple improve Siri, and Microsoft is concerned

On May 30, technology media The Information published a blog post yesterday stating that Apple had contacted OpenAI as early as mid-2023, and Microsoft was concerned about the deal between the two companies.

Apple and OpenAI have been in talks for a year

It is reported that Apple will announce its cooperation with OpenAI at the WWDC 2024 Global Developers Conference to be held at 1 a.m. on June 11 this year.

IT Home learned from the report that in addition to connecting OpenAI's ChatGPT chat service to Apple's iOS and other systems, it also invited OpenAI team members to help optimize Siri and continuously improve its "intelligence."

It is reported that employees of Apple's machine learning team began contacting OpenAI CEO Altman and his employees around the WWDC 2023 conference.

While little is known about what exactly they discussed, the two companies later reached an agreement that gave Apple employees access to OpenAI’s API for internal testing.

The report stated: "In related tests, Apple engineers connected ChatGPT and Siri, which greatly improved Siri's processing power and allowed it to better understand the context of what the user said." This has already been found in Apple's iOS 17.4 code.

Sources familiar with the matter said the company is focusing on using OpenAI technology to allow Siri to answer more complex questions and even turn it into a chatbot. OpenAI showed Apple how Siri can become more responsive and natural, and even use its API to provide real-time translation.

Microsoft is concerned about the deal

The report also revealed that Microsoft has been paying attention to the partnership between Apple and OpenAI. This is because Microsoft has also reached an agreement with OpenAI, with OpenAI providing the technology behind Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft allowing OpenAI to use its data centers to support ChatGPT.

Altman recently met with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to discuss these issues.

Microsoft, for example, worries about how to handle the demand on its servers when Apple rolls out new features for iPhone and iPad users.

The company behind Windows also demanded a share of OpenAI's future profits in exchange for a $13 billion investment in the startup.

On the one hand, Microsoft may end up making more money from the collaboration between Apple and OpenAI; on the other hand, Apple's AI capabilities will be in direct competition with Microsoft's AI capabilities.

While negotiating with OpenAI, Apple was also trying to reach a deal with Google to use Gemini in iOS 18. Despite the deal, the company has also been developing its own language model that will run offline to handle simpler tasks like summarizing text.