Apple is ready for its foray into the world of artificial intelligence. According to Bloomberg, the company has recently signed an agreement with OpenAI to integrate AI technology into iPhones with the arrival of the next operating system, iOS 18. This announcement is expected to be made at Apple’s annual developer conference, WWDC 2024, scheduled for June 10th.
In the face of Siri’s obsolescence, Apple plans to introduce up to two AI assistants in its new software. Despite the agreement with OpenAI, the company is also in talks with Google, which could result in the arrival of Gemini on the iPhone as an alternative to ChatGPT. According to Gurman, the full details of the agreement could be revealed next month, as both parties are still fine-tuning crucial aspects such as licenses and other terms.
In a recent event, a former employee of OpenAI described Sam Altman as a “masterful class strategist genius” for his role in the agreement between OpenAI and Apple, despite OpenAI’s ongoing partnership with Microsoft. At the Spring Update event, OpenAI introduced the GPT-4o model, which features real-time voice, vision, and text capabilities, as well as an exclusive ChatGPT app for Mac users.
This exclusivity was justified by the high concentration of OpenAI users on Mac, which aligns with a report from Appfigures that highlights a significant increase in ChatGPT’s revenue and downloads on iOS devices thanks to the new GPT-4o model.
Meanwhile, Google maintains a competitive advantage over Microsoft despite its recent failures. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, has accused Google of unfair practices that disadvantage Bing in the search market, highlighting Google’s relationship with Apple. Nadella even pointed out his willingness to invest up to $15 billion annually to make Bing the default search engine on iPhones.
In 2018, Microsoft was close to selling its search engine to Apple, but the deal did not go through due to quality issues in the searches. In addition, the European Commission has classified Google as a “gatekeeper”, forcing it to take measures to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), including the possibility of changing the default browser and search engine on Android devices.
