OpenAI and Apple’s Rude Wake-Up Call

St. Patrick’s Day didn’t bring OpenAI or Apple much luck. Yesterday’s Bloomberg report that the iPhone maker is in talks to license Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence models to power new features for the iPhone was likely a blow to the ego of leaders at OpenAI, not to mention Apple’s own AI teams.

It’s not yet clear what kind of valuable generative AI services a deal like this could allow Apple to bake into its devices. AI-powered chatbot apps, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and search engines already are available to iPhone users. And given Apple’s focus on safety and security, it seems unlikely that they’ll let a large language model run amuck with Siri (especially after the reaction to Google’s image generation debacle). 

Whatever the case, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman may well be peeved at the news. He has long told colleagues about his interest in working with Apple, and last summer he met with an Apple team that implements AI into devices, people have told my colleagues Wayne Ma and Natasha Mascarenhas.