As Apple enters the AI race, it is also seeking help from partners.
In an Apple Intelligence announcement earlier this month, Apple said it would partner with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to an improved version of Siri, and now The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple and Facebook parent company Meta are in talks about a similar deal.
Those talks have not yet been finalized and may reportedly fall through. Meta declined to comment, and Apple did not immediately respond.
As Sara Perez pointed out, Apple's approach to AI seems a bit boring and pragmatic at the moment. The company is starting by adding AI-powered features (such as sentence suggestions and custom emojis) to existing products rather than seeing it as an opportunity to completely reinvent or disrupt. But prioritizing practicality over flashiness may be the key to AI adoption, allowing Apple to leverage partnerships to exceed the capabilities of its own AI models.
A deal with Meta could therefore allow Apple to reduce its reliance on a single partner while also proving the effectiveness of Meta's generative AI technology. The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple won't pay for these collaborations, but will instead provide distribution to its AI partners and allow them to sell premium subscriptions.
And Elon Musk, the co-founder of OpenAI who now competes with it through his new startup xAI, was so concerned about ChatGPT's potential to be deeply integrated into Apple's operating system that he threatened to ban his company from using Apple devices, but Apple has said it will ask for user permission before sharing any questions or data with ChatGPT. Presumably, the integration with Meta will work in a similar way.
In another recent development, Apple said that although Apple Intelligence will be coming to the latest versions of its operating systems later this year (including iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia), it will not offer the technology in the European Union due to the EU's Digital Markets Act (which is supposed to promote competition in digital markets). It also said it will not offer iPhone Mirroring and SharePlay screen sharing.
“We are concerned that the DMA's interoperability requirements may force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that put our users' privacy and data security at risk,” the company said in a statement.