Apple reportedly has an in-house ChatGPT-like chatbot but you can't use it

You'd need to have been hiding in a cave without phone signal to have missed the fact that large language models, or LLMs, are massive right now. ChatGPT is the most popular, but there are others and while Apple is behind in this market it's working to catch up, according to a new report.

That report claims that Apple has built a framework called Ajax that can be used to create new chatbots. In fact, it's already been doing it and one of those chatbots is being used inside Apple right now.

That's according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman who says that the internal chatbot is only available to some employees who have been approved to access it. And even then, anything that chatbot creates can't be used in customer-facing products. Some inside Apple are calling it Apple GPT.

Apple has already benefited from Ajax and a renewed focus on AI. Improvements to iPhone search and Siri reportedly have Apple's new focus to thank, while some sources claim that Apple could be working towards announcing something new and major in the world of AI as soon as next year. It isn't clear what form that might take, however, but some integration with Siri seems the most logical option.

Apple is reportedly already keen to hire new AI-focused engineers to bolster its teams. John Giannandrea, Apple's head of machine learning and AI, and Craig Federighi, Apple's top software engineering executive, are leading the efforts, are said to be at the forefront of Apple's new AI efforts.

Whether we will actually see a new AI feature next year remains to be seen, but with Microsoft and Google forging ahead Apple is right to take take its own look at what LLMs can do.