Apple has decided to jump into the AI war.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Garman, Apple is working on competing with ChatGPT and Google Bard. This strategy seems to be leading not only to a massive language modeling platform dubbed "Ajax," but also to an AI chatbot that engineers are calling in-house "Apple GPT."

This push for AI chatbots is a relatively recent development for Apple. Previously, Apple seemed reluctant to jump into the AI arms race because it would conflict with CEO Tim Cook's desire to avoid controversy and seek sophisticated products. However, it seems that Apple had to put up with it for a long time and has now been developing an AI platform for the past several months.

Since this news just broke, here are three major points you should know about "Apple GPT."

Garman's revelations have revealed the internal codenames of two internal AI projects.

The first is "Ajax." It appears to be a platform for creating large-scale language models (LLMs) such as the GPT-4 model that drives Bing Chat and ChatGPT and the PaLM 2 model that drives Google Bard; Google's machine learning framework Jax (hence the name "Ajax") is built on top of and runs on Google Cloud servers. [But Ajax is not LLM itself, nor is it an AI chatbot. Instead, it is used to build Apple's AI products, including an internal project by Apple engineers called Apple GPT.

If "Apple GPT" is ever launched as a consumer product, the real name will obviously not refer to what will be Apple's main competitor in the generative AI field. But for now, this is an appropriate placeholder.

According to Garman, Apple employees have stated that the current iteration of Apple GPT is not revolutionary. Instead, they say that it "essentially replicates Bard, ChatGPT, and Bing AI and contains no novel features or technologies."

Apple also has no current plans to release this to consumers.

Apple has reportedly been reluctant to rush into AI, often citing privacy concerns. This is reiterated in Gurman's report.

Indeed, according to Gurman, the AI project Apple is working on is primarily focused on improving privacy when using generative AI." That work includes trying to address potential privacy concerns associated with the technology." And John Giannandrea, the company's head of machine learning and AI, wants to maintain Apple's conservative approach to consumer-generated AI.

In short, don't expect to see Apple GPT on the iPhone 15 when it launches this fall. This is in contrast to how Microsoft handled the launch of Bing Chat.

Gurman reports that Apple GPT was created experimentally by a small team of Apple engineers. Apple GPT is internal to Apple and requires special permission if you are an Apple employee. Similar to Apple's hesitancy with generative AI, which we previously reported on, Apple stopped the internal deployment of Apple GPT due to security concerns. But it's not just that Apple GPT is currently unavailable. According to Garman, "We cannot use the output from GPT to develop features for our customers." It is currently limited to supporting prototypes, essentially a more secure chatbot used by Apple instead of external products like ChatGPT or Google Bard.

Apple is cautious about creating AI chatbots, but that doesn't mean it doesn't use AI in its products. Siri, the famous Apple voice assistant, is an Apple AI product that anyone with an iPhone probably uses every day.

But that's not the only AI built into the iPhone. Garman notes that the iPhone's photo and search functions have been upgraded to AI over the years, and this fall's iOS 17 will feature a new, AI-improved autocorrect.

In fact, we recently saw reports that AI will be "actively" utilized in the iPhone 15, which will be available this fall. This could include improved AI integration with the iOS Health app, which may allow users to get tailored workouts, meal plans, and exercise habits based on data the app collects (such as heart rate, sleep, and breathing data).

In other words, don't expect Apple GPT on your iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 Pro, but expect it to be improved by AI machine learning.