Apple finalizing deal with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT features to iOS 18
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
I wonder if this is the gpt2 we saw recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40201486
What we (speaking selfishly about https://www.definite.app/) really need are faster models.
I really hope the rumors are true about gpt2 and it's a smaller, faster, gpt4ish level of intelligence model.
They have and will double down on AI within apps, like selecting the subject in photos, transformer driven typing suggestions, and other app features.
They will have a way to call out to a third-party, server-side GPT-style AI like ChatGPT for some functions.
They will have one more more local AIs running on-device and possibly replacing what Siri does now and tying the other AI together. This would likely intercept the user's request, infer the meaning, and match that to one or more service to satisfy that request. This is probably like what Rabbit R1 wanted to be but didn't have access to the features that Apple AI would.
Apple has been building the components of this for years. Their App Intents interface lets apps publish their features and make them available to call from automation like Shortcuts or an LLM powered Siri. They have been shipping devices with neural processors for 7 years. They have been publishing papers about ways to run LLMs and other AI on device and with reduced resources. If you aren't building a web answerbot yourself, you don't need the full scope of a ChatGPT locally.
It makes a lot of sense for Apple to deploy hardware and small on-device LLMs as extremely overpowered “routing” modules that do basic things locally and then farm out other things to a cloud partner.
This also fits in well with OpenAI allegedly launching some sort of assistant Monday, so then Apple can point to it if it does well (and integrate it) or at the last minute fall back to Google if OpenAI flops.
I wonder if Tim Apple models the Google search deal ending in the next 2-3years, and if there’s a contingency in case chat-based interfaces flop. Given how the car got canned, it would be surprising to see Apple try to make their own GPT-5 / search engine, so the 5-7 year plan must be to remain largely dependent on Google and Microsoft (and to keep Facebook out of the party).
1. You can't fit a XXX billion param model on an iPhone. It's just impossible. A mixed approach where most ML is local; but some are cloud, fits with their existing Siri approach.
2. OpenAI won't share model weights, but if there's one company they'd make an exception for, it'd be Apple. Certainly not their big models, but perhaps they have a distilled, SOTA 3-7B model that they're happy to license, especially with Apple's Secure Enclave and ML model encryption.
A mixed approach is a great point though and I think I could mostly be happy with that.
Wouldn’t memory be a much bigger bottleneck? You don’t really need a particularly fast a CPU/GPU to run most basic models that couldn’t even fit into the amount of memory that Apple is offering on their devices (especially if you still want to run other apps).
You misunderstand point 1. Three-digit billion parameter models like GPT-4 (or even 3.5) aren't going to fit on modern iPhones, not even close. Even Llama 70b requires 35GB of RAM at q4 quantization, and that's just for the model.
Compare that to the iPhone 15's 6GB and you'll see the problem. Apple isn't about to announce an iPhone with 6x as much RAM as any previous model. I'd be shocked if they even doubled it. Their local inference models are going to be tiny and limited, which is fine, but that means they have to go to the cloud to provide all the features people are expecting.
Almost all Apple devices (including most Macs) have very low amounts of memory so Apple hadn’t really positioned themselves that well if their goal is running LLMs locally.
You need it to understand what you want to do within the limited scope of the phone.
Basically I want Apple's AI to do what Shortcuts is capable of today, but instead of a janky Scratch programming style, I want it to respond to speech.
Microsoft has 'em [0]
0 - plenty of sources on this, but here's one https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1639138603371491329
> The majority of iOS 18’s AI features, however, will be powered entirely on-device, allowing Apple to tout privacy and speed benefits.
However I feel like outside of a few niches like HN, people don’t give a damn about privacy (for example, the company I work for has a website with millions of daily unique visitors; GDPR consent rates are usually around 98%).
So if other phones use models running on the cloud and they’re higher quality than the local running ones in iPhones (which will prob be smaller) that might be more important to the average user.
But anything is better than old school Siri
Local models can also more easily plug into existing macOS/iOS facilities like AppleScript, Automator, Services, Shortcuts, and NSUserActivity which means they’ll be a lot more functional, with the ability to wire together apps that haven’t explicitly added AI support.
In other words there’s a lot of potential here. If implemented well, LLM-powered Siri would have vastly more context and integration than anything else right out of the gate.
I also don’t think the GDPR consent is a good measure. Those suck to opt out of manually and I doubt most people consider finding an extension. Apple sells its privacy as zero to low configuration. You “buy” privacy, you don’t configure it. Whether their claims are misleading or not. That’s extremely appealing.
A few other thoughts:
* Local models would be a requirement if Advanced Data Protection[0] were enabled
* Local models could potentially do some interesting work with hefty data (something media related maybe) that isn’t fit for cloud workflows
[0]: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/advanced-data-prote...
"Apple Inc. will deliver some of its upcoming artificial intelligence features this year via data centers equipped with its own in-house processors, part of a sweeping effort to infuse its devices with AI capabilities.
The company is placing high-end chips — similar to ones it designed for the Mac — in cloud-computing servers designed to process the most advanced AI tasks coming to Apple devices, according to people familiar with the matter. Simpler AI-related features will be processed directly on iPhones, iPads and Macs
...
The first AI server chips will be the M2 Ultra, which was launched last year as part of the Mac Pro and Mac Studio computers, though the company is already eyeing future versions based on the M4 chip..."
...
Relatively simple AI tasks — like providing users a summary of their missed iPhone notifications or incoming text messages — could be handled by the chips inside of Apple devices. More complicated jobs, such as generating images or summarizing lengthy news articles and creating long-form responses in emails, would likely require the cloud-based approach — as would an upgraded version of Apple’s Siri voice assistant.
...
For now, Apple is planning to use its own data centers to operate the cloud features, but it will eventually rely on outside facilities — as it does with iCloud and other services. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on some aspects of the server plan."
---
And from [2], Apple has been working on Apple Chips in Data Center (ACDC) for few years, focusing on AI inference, not training.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-09/apple-to-...
[2] https://www.medianama.com/2024/05/223-apple-launches-project...
Fast forward two years later, and the AI penetration landscape doesn't look good. Apple just started thinking about "doing something" about "this AI thing" (which they don't call AI btw, but that's Apple being Apple). Google has a redundant Gemini app on stock Android which overlaps with Google Assistant capabilities (so Google Assistant is not actually equipped with large LMs yet), Alexa is still the same Alexa, and Microsoft Copilot is half-baked in terms of UI/UX (I still don't know why Microsoft can't build decent user apps).
The lesson is clear: There is so much inertia in this industry that our jobs will be safe for the foreseeable future. Everyone was afraid of AI-generated content polluting the web. Well, here we are, and aside from some ridiculously obvious content which is generated by AI, the web is still the same web we knew in 2022.
It's ridiculous how long ordinary users have to wait for this AI stuff to become officially available on their handheld devices by these companies. Like I said, I and many people were enjoying LLMs on iDevices way before OpenAI introduced ChatGPT and its app companion, and way way before Apple even introduces its own version.
Speaking of Apple's LLM features, do you think they will be bundled with the rest of Apple One service package? Business-wise, it makes sense for Apple to charge people for iLLM/Siri Pro/ or whatever they call it.
Unfortunately it’s only going to get worse. Just like how digital art has zero significance nowadays (hay-days of 2008 deviantART, when some digital art was considered impressive, is gone), so will a lot of other things. My only hope is, it will boost something else that we don’t know yet, or maybe we’ll go back to prioritizing the reality.
I would be surprised if they released a ChatGPT style chat bot. Likely it will just improve the quality of Siri and search, among other things. I wouldn’t be surprised if Siri has already been benefiting from recent developments.
You’re also implying that they’re moving slowly because they’re a lumbering behemoth, but really they’re just being cautious with an immature and potentially volatile technology.
Think about it: GPT-DAN, free flights and cars being offered by ai chat bots… at Apple scale that would be disastrous.
We aren't. It's companies that are spending the money. They want us to buy their products and they are afraid of missing out. It's a new gold rush.
On the other hand, isn't it a bit late for Apple to be finalizing things before WWDC? I mean, that doesn't give them that much time to make the video and prepare dev builds. And then they have to tune the system prompt, slide it into the OS (although maybe they have just an API field they can just plug it into), and then do QA. I don't know. Maybe this is old info. Still, I'll be eagerly awaiting any VoiceOver/accessibility updates!
On device would be amazing, but I suspect GPT 4.0 would still be too large to be able to run on device - regardless on how much more Neural Engine grunt the next A series Apple chip has.
Otherwise it would have just been an app.
Apple Will Revamp Siri to Catch Up to Its Chatbot Competitors
"If, on the Meta Llama 3 version release date, the monthly active users of the products or services made available by or for Licensee, or Licensee’s affiliates, is greater than 700 million monthly active users in the preceding calendar month, you must request a license from Meta, which Meta may grant to you in its sole discretion, and you are not authorized to exercise any of the rights under this Agreement unless or until Meta otherwise expressly grants you such rights."
Such weird timing to do an interview and avoid on device versions for Apple
If this Bloomberg rumour is true, why wouldn’t he schedule that interview for next week?
What a waste of everyone’s time
Don’t do a lot of programming any longer.
It’s sometimes useful but at this point it just isn’t revolutionary for anything I do.
> you’re living in the Stone Age, lolz
Skepticism is healthy and even warranted. We don’t have to gleefully embrace every new shiny thing the tech companies throw at us.
Heck the founder of this site himself once wrote an essay cautioning about adopting new services or tech too quickly because it is too often turned against us [1]:
> It took a while though—on the order of 100 years. And unless the rate at which social antibodies evolve can increase to match the accelerating rate at which technological progress throws off new addictions, we'll be increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us. [3] Unless we want to be canaries in the coal mine of each new addiction—the people whose sad example becomes a lesson to future generations—we'll have to figure out for ourselves what to avoid and how. It will actually become a reasonable strategy (or a more reasonable strategy) to suspect everything new.
I'd prefer that Apple stop removing valuable functionality and replacing it with junk. The removal of the headphone jack and Touch ID have deterred me from buying a new iPhone. I'm writing an mobile app right now, and I'm targeting iOS 15 so I can run it on my own phone. This requires some non-trivial workarounds to insufferable SwiftUI defects that existed until iOS 17.
Meanwhile, Apple refuses to fix the most absurd omission from the iPhone: audible NOTIFICATIONS OF MISSED CALLS. Truly stupid. So yeah... they have some work to do before dicking around with "AI."
I just have very few notifications turned on. For example none of my chat programs notify.
You’re talking about your case and you’re applying it to everyone. Some people want more notifications, need more, some don’t (you).
I perfectly understand that a missed call can be critical. Some callers are not very bright and don’t understand that if it’s critical they should leave a voicemail or send a message. I deal with such people a lot.
Sad that we have to explain this to people.
If an emergency happens with my parents, they're going to CALL ME. And the fact that I won't know about it if I happen to be in the shower or down the hall doing laundry or working outside for a few minutes is absurd and stupid.
Unbelievable that anyone would argue against this obvious OPTIONAL function, which has been present on telephonic devices for decades. Apple's handheld Unix computer/phone is the first I've had without it... and the one with the least excuse.
Also, is it just me or does the example of asking ChatGPT for gift ideas seem rather "dehumanising", for lack of a better term?