Apple’s ChatGPT rival

Hey everyone, it’s Mark. Apple has a new “Answers” team developing a stripped-down rival to ChatGPT to help users access world knowledge. Also: An iPhone 17 Pro is spotted in San Francisco, and Apple loses its fourth AI researcher in a month to Meta. Lastly, more on Apple’s latest executive changes.

Last time in Power On: The first foldable iPhone will arrive next year in un-Apple-like fashion.

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The Starters

OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

When Apple Inc. introduced its artificial intelligence platform last year, it made one thing clear: There wouldn’t be a homegrown chatbot. Instead, the company teamed up with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into the Siri voice assistant, letting users access what it calls “world knowledge” without building a product in-house.

Since then, Apple’s top software and marketing executives have dismissed the need for a chatbot, arguing that consumer interest is limited. They’ve also pushed back against the notion that this missing element shows Apple is falling behind in artificial intelligence. Internally, some leaders in the company’s AI group have even expressed skepticism about ChatGPT-style tools altogether.

But the reality is...

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