Apple Reportedly Developing a ChatGPT-Style Answer Engine

Apple is reportedly developing an in-house answer engine that will be powered by artificial intelligence (AI). As per the report, the company has also formed a new team that has been tasked with developing this ChatGPT-style answer engine product. Interestingly, the reported move comes after the Cupertino-based tech giant has downplayed the role of chatbots in its ecosystem and claimed that Apple will not be making any such product. On the flip side, the answer engine could also be the iPhone maker planning for a future when the deal with Google for its search engine does not exist.

Apple Reportedly Forms Answers, Knowledge, and Information Team

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman wrote in the Power-On newsletter that Apple has formed a new team dubbed Answers, Knowledge, and Information or AKI. Citing unnamed sources familiar with the development, the report claimed that this group is tasked with building an in-house “ChatGPT-like search experience.”

For those who find the term “answer engine” confusing, it was popularised by AI startup Perplexity, which called its AI-powered web search experience answer engine. Essentially, it is a dual system, where the first finds relevant URLs and information from the web based on search queries like a typical search engine, and the second collates the information to respond in a conversational manner using a large language model (LLM).

Gurman says that the AKI team is led by Apple’s senior director, Robby Walker, who reports to John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president of Machine Learning and AI Strategy. As per Walker’s LinkedIn profile, he was made the head of the new team in April. The team reportedly features several team members who previously worked on Siri.

Apple’s version of the answer engine will reportedly be a system that responds to general-knowledge questions. The technology is said to be added to other Apple services such as Siri, Spotlight, and Safari. The company is reportedly still considering whether to offer the technology in a standalone app.

Interestingly, in June, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, told The Wall Street Journal that the company was not considering building a “bolt-on chatbot,” because that did not align with the tech giant’s vision of the AI technology.

This reported answer engine could also help Apple, in case Google loses its antitrust case against the US Department of Justice, where a key issue is the latter’s $20 billion (roughly Rs. 1.7 lakh crore) a year deal with the iPhone maker to remain the default search engine on Apple devices.