Apple shares began to rise after Bloomberg reported that the tech giant was working on its own generative AI tool. Yahoo Finance Tech editor Dan Howley explains the report.
video transcript
Brian Sotzi: Apple shares rose today after reports the tech giant was working to develop its own AI chatbot to rival ChatGPT. Yahoo Finance’s technical editor Dan Howley goes into more detail. Dan, I’m sure Apple does too, but are they taking Nvidia’s new tech efforts seriously?
Dan Howley: It’s hard to understand, right? This is from Mark Garman, who again lives under a Tim Cook mattress or in a wall. I don’t know what he did, but he is doing it. This is basically a kind of technology called Ajax. And this is basically what he says is the foundation of his AI software.
So, it doesn’t necessarily mean that ChatGPT rivals exist, but reports indicate that they are either developing ChatGPT rivals or working on them internally. The question is how this would work for a company like Apple as well. They don’t have a search engine that fits this perfectly. They have Siri, but Siri is just hanging out. They’re not doing much, and they’re not doing all that good. So I’m not sure what this applies to.
And the other thing to consider about this sort of thing is, we know investors are excited about this, but we shouldn’t throw cold water on it. But due to the kind of sluggishness that Siri has been through and the fact that they don’t have anything that really fits this, the technology is being quietly incorporated behind the scenes to power some of the other software. You may think that Yes, it’s a very Apple move. they won’t say
And I kind of wrote this a few months ago, but if you ask me about last year’s earnings season, every company in their earnings call said AI was 30x Microsoft mentioned and 20x meta. It was a feeling. Alphabet 30 times. I forget the exact numbers, but Apple mentioned that twice. It’s just because someone asked.
So I know what’s important to Apple is that this is the kind of thing that leads to their favorite word, magic, etc. But they really like to put the technology behind the scenes and let the user just interact with the product. So even though they’re working on this, I don’t think we’re going to do much, you know, this is our AI work. They plan to develop a product for this to work, and may work well outside of Apple Maps at first launch. Although it is probably very good now.
But I think it’s going to be more like driving in the backseat than a place where you can, well, have fun with AI. So don’t expect ChatGPT or Apple GPT to be called that in this article.
Sheena Smith: yes, let’s see. At least she has to think that one analyst will probably ask specifically about this report or what AI ambitions will look like.
