Apple arrives fashionably late to the AI party

In the AI arms race, big tech behemoth Apple has lagged behind the competition.

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have so far made bigger investments, or more deeply incorporated, machine learning into their products. Microsoft is a primary investor in OpenAI, the operator of Chat GPT, while Google hosts its subsidiary DeepMind, and Amazon has invested $4 billion in OpenAI rival Anthropic.

Given the rapid pace of AI advancements, you may have noticed Siri feels a little outdated—or you may not have noticed, considering barely anyone likes or even uses Siri anymore.

But that is all set to change as Apple unveils its plans to catch up in the AI race at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which kicked off today at Apple Park in Cupertino, California.

The company has already begun to announce a whole host of AI implementations in its products, including giving Siri a long-awaited upgrade and adding AI capabilities to text writing and photo editing. Dubbed “Apple Intelligence,” some of these new features include “genmojis,” or generative emoji reactions you can add to messages. 🤷

But the biggest announcement of the day is Apple’s partnership with OpenAI. The deal will see the AI startup’s ChatGPT brought to Apple iPhones and integrated with Siri. More importantly, it may help close the gap with Apple’s Magnificent 7 peers.