Every June, Apple unveils the latest software features for the iPhone at its futuristic Silicon Valley campus, but at its annual developers conference on Monday, the company will be spotlighting a feature that's not new: Siri, its voice assistant, which has been around for more than a decade.
What's different this time is the technology that powers Siri: generative artificial intelligence.
Adrian Perica, Apple's vice president of corporate development, has been spearheading efforts in recent months to bring generative AI to the masses, said two people familiar with the effort who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the project.
Perica and his colleagues are in talks with major AI companies, including Google and OpenAI, to find partners to help Apple provide generative AI across its business. Apple recently struck a deal with OpenAI, maker of the chatbot ChatGPT, to build its technology into iPhones, according to two people familiar with the deal. As of last week, talks with Google were still ongoing, two people familiar with the talks said.
That will help develop a more conversational, feature-rich version of Siri, due to be unveiled on Monday, according to three people familiar with the company. Siri will feature a generative AI system developed by Apple that will enable the conversational assistant to have a conversation rather than just answer one question at a time. Apple plans to market the new AI capabilities as Apple Intelligence, said a person familiar with the marketing plans.
Apple, OpenAI and Google declined to comment. The agreement between Apple and OpenAI was previously reported by The Information and Bloomberg, which also reported on the name of Apple's AI system.
Apple's foray into generative AI will be a test of whether the company can again enter and redefine new markets. Apple didn't make the first digital music player, smartphone, or smartwatch, but it revolutionized those categories with the iPod, iPhone, and Apple Watch. After two years of watching Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Samsung build generative AI into their products, Apple is now moving from bystander to potential challenger.
Putting generative AI into the iPhone will also be a landmark moment for the technology, which can answer questions, create images and write software code. Apple plans to expand generative AI to more than a billion users before gauging how useful it is to everyday iPhone customers.
So far, the technology's promise has been marred by flaws: Google has introduced and then rolled back a generative AI search feature that recommended eating rocks, while Microsoft has been criticized over security vulnerabilities in computers that use AI to record every second of your actions.
“AI is so complicated, we're still figuring it out,” said Carolina Milanesi, president of technology research firm Creative Strategies. “Apple is pretty conservative about everything, so I'm not sure they'll wow people, but they have to do it because this is how we're going to interact with technology going forward.”
The main reason for Apple's foray into AI is not consumers, but Wall Street investors. AI technology has boosted the value of generative AI giant Microsoft and AI chip seller Nvidia. In January, Microsoft surpassed Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded technology company.
Apple's silence on AI has caused a market shakeup: The company has a policy of not disclosing future product plans, but as its stock price tumbled, Chief Executive Tim Cook broke with tradition and told Wall Street analysts in a May conference call that the company would soon be introducing generative AI products.
Since Cook made that promise, Apple's stock has recovered. As of Friday, Apple's shares were up 6% this year, slower than Microsoft's 14% gain and Nvidia's 151% gain.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of copyrighted articles related to AI systems.)
Apple has long been under pressure to improve Siri, the app that wowed people when it was released in 2011 but hasn't changed much since. The conversational assistant's shortcomings were highlighted in a scene during the final season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” when comedian Larry David yelled at Siri for repeatedly giving wrong directions.
ChatGPT has brought OpenAI to the forefront of the generative AI movement, and Apple plans to supplement what OpenAI offers with tech it has developed in-house to perform specific tasks on the iPhone: The company's system helps Siri set timers, create calendar events and summarize text messages.
The company also plans to tout an improved Siri as more private than competing AI services because it processes many requests on the iPhone rather than remotely in a data center.Apple's focus on privacy has been a sticking point in its negotiations with OpenAI and Google, because it wanted to limit the data that iPhone data partners receive, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
Analysts say Apple could consider offering an improved Siri as a service: Morgan Stanley estimates that a $5-per-month subscription to the voice assistant could generate $4 billion to $8 billion in annual revenue for the company.
Though it was late to the generative AI race, Apple has been exploring the idea of digital personal assistants for nearly 40 years.
In 1987, the company released a concept video of a professor talking to an assistant called Knowledge Navigator, which could manage the professor's schedule, display lecture notes, etc. The video inspired a group of AI researchers at SRI International, an independent research institute, to develop a virtual assistant called Siri in 2008.
Apple bought the company for $200 million in 2010. The company released Siri for the iPhone a year later, showing off features like the ability to tell you the time in Paris and give you a list of 14 Greek restaurants.
“We've achieved a user interface paradigm that nobody has really improved upon,” says Siri co-founder Tom Gruber, who worked at Apple until 2018. “But we still don't have a personal AI, an assistant that knows my life. With generative AI, that's now possible.”
Cade Metz and Brian X. Chen Contributed report.