Ben Madilynn
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is currently set to receive huge funding from corporate giants. Yet Apple has seemingly withdrawn interest, despite ChatGPT being one of the most important parts of Apple Intelligence right now.
OpenAI is in a bit of a weird space. Just last week, it was reported that the AI company would be dropping its nonprofit structure and opting to make profit—which seems antithetical to its stated goal of “building safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity.”
Alongside this, CTO Mira Murati was announced to be leaving the company as it restructures for the new business model. This was just the final nail in the coffin for the company’s altruistic aims, as it had previously set up a for-profit subsidiary, which the likes of Microsoft heavily invested in.
A newly published report from the Wall Street Journal suggests that the current round of corporate funding could take in as much as $6.5 billion, despite Apple deciding to leave the talks. Microsoft is expected to put in another $1 billion, equating to a total of $13 billion from the company since OpenAI’s inception.
Nvidia is also said to be in talks to invest, though a concrete figure has not yet been solidified.
Though it won’t arrive until its beta in December, ChatGPT inclusion is one of the biggest selling points of Apple Intelligence, the company’s grouping of AI software tools. This allows for better notification navigation, generative AI emojis, and writing tools. However, every part of the UI is also said to be refined with ChatGPT, which can generate art and words, but also answer questions, and give suggestions.
It is supposed to be only one of a handful of chatbots coming to Apple Intelligence but will be the only one at the start—and if the iPhone’s history with the Google search engine is anything to go off, this deal could be quite lucrative for both companies.
This makes Apple’s move to pull out of talks seem a little strange. It is one of the most important parts of its upcoming software, and ChatGPT currently sees 200 million weekly users, so it owns a significant part of the chatbot market. However, those extra funds could be spent on diversifying Apple’s range of chatbots—something it will need to do to learn from Google’s infamous antitrust dispute.
