Unsurprisingly, reports about Apple’s own chatbot emerged close on the heels of Meta announcing Llama 2 with Microsoft as the preferred partner to launch it on Azure cloud. The partnership must have hit Apple hard. Adding insult to injury, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a rare picture with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. 

While Apple’s Vision Pro garnered significant media attention, the company has chosen to stay mum on generative AI. During the second-quarter earnings call on May 4, CEO Tim Cook notably omitted any remarks about artificial intelligence in his opening statements, setting Apple apart from other major tech vendors who frequently discuss AI advancements. “As you know, we don’t comment on product roadmaps,” Cook said, when questioned by Credit Suisse analyst Shannon Cross about his perspective on generative AI as a whole and how the technology will integrate with Apple’s products.

A Bloomberg report contradicts the notion that Apple is shying away from generative AI. As per the report, Apple is putting a lot of effort into advancing AI, and several teams are working together on this project, according to insiders who wish to remain anonymous. They are also actively working to address any privacy concerns related to the technology. Apple is synonymous with closed ecosystems in the tech industry. Whether it’s their hardware, software, or user experience philosophy, Apple has always advocated for a walled-garden approach, ensuring tight integration between its products and services.

It  is known for accessing open source tools without contributing to the development of the technology. Aleksa Gordic, ex-Google DeepMind/ Microsoft ML engineer reflecting on the same, said that he wished LLaMA 2 license was somehow applicable to fundamental AI research to force Apple to publish their internal research. “They never give anything in return, and yet benefit enormously from the research coming in from all the other big tech companies. It just doesn’t feel right,” he added.

It is quite selfish of Apple to not contribute anything substantial to the open source community. According to Hugging Face stats, Meta holds the highest number of contributions to the open-source community, followed by Google and Microsoft.

Not Contributing to Open Source Community 

The notion of Apple being secretive is not a recent one; it has been ingrained in the company’s culture since the days of Steve Jobs. This approach, however, has its pros and cons. It shows Apple is dedicated to its customers, creating a private ecosystem that prioritises confidentiality and doesn’t disclose personal details. This helps Apple gain customers’ trust with their data. Chatbots are the most lucrative way for any company to gain data. And if Apple is able to win customers’ trust with their chatbot, who knows enterprises might rush to adopt it since confidentiality is key for them. 

On the other hand, this practice raises questions about whether Apple is actively contributing to the tech society. In the technology space, advancements do not occur in isolation; collaboration is essential. Meta has embraced this approach consistently. Microsoft, a crucial partner of OpenAI, has chosen a different route by collaborating with Meta. It is actively exploring open-source opportunities and acting as a bridge between GPT-4 and Llama 2 to position itself for future advancements. 

Interestingly, Apple’s Ajax system is built on top of Google Jax, the search giant’s machine learning framework and Apple’s system runs on Google Cloud, which the company uses to power cloud services alongside its own infrastructure and Amazon’s AWS. Also, GPT (which stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer), was originally coined and developed by Google in 2018. It serves as the foundation for both OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s GPT. If Apple has taken so much from its competitors, should it not pay them back? 

In comparison, OpenAI, which started as an open source non-profit company, turned into a closed  system, capped-profit company in 2020 following the footsteps of Apple. But, now, things seem to be changing. Now, OpenAI is now looking at releasing the weights of its models.  In the race of AI advancement, Apple seems to be quietly selfish. It’s time they collaborated and contributed more for the benefit of the AI ecosystem, and not just build the ecosystem around their products and services for its customers.