Apple may have already built a ChatGPT rival, but you won’t see it soon – Digital Trends
Apple’s struggles to give Siri an AI-brain transplant and push it into the same league as Gemini and ChatGPT have been ruined by delays and technical challenges. But ahead of the rumored 2026 AI rebirth of Siri, Apple has already created an AI app similar to ChatGPT to test next-gen features for the Siri assistant.
Under the codename Veritas, Apple has reportedly developed an iPhone app that serves as a test-bed for Siri’s upcoming features. The app is similar to AI chatbot apps such as ChatGPT, with a memory feature to recall the context of previous conversations and advanced conversational capabilities.
“The company’s AI division is using the app to quickly evaluate new features for Siri, Apple’s voice-powered assistant. That includes testing the ability to search through personal data, such as songs and emails, and perform in-app actions like editing photos,” says a report by Bloomberg.
The app is built atop a new code with the same AI foundations as other apps, which offer a large language model (LLM). In this case, the code is hybrid, combining Apple’s own Foundation Models and those supplied by a different AI lab.
The app currently being tested at Apple is likely a prototype designed solely for analyzing in-development features. Down the road, these features could be integrated within the Siri app and the Apple Intelligence stack as a whole.
The situation is pretty interesting. So far, Apple has offered a system where OpenAI’s ChatGPT takes over when Siri can’t fulfill a complex query. But as the company struggled with in-house progress, it has apparently talked with Google and Anthropic to test a version of Siri powered by Gemini and Claude, respectively.
“The fact that the company isn’t preparing to release the Veritas chatbot to customers comes as little surprise,” adds the latest report. It would be interesting to see what upgrades Apple has planned for Siri, which is due for an “LLM Siri” rebirth and a new visual identity.
One of the most obvious — and honestly, the dullest —trends within the smartphone industry over the past couple of years has been the incessant talk about AI experiences. Silicon warriors, in particular, often touted how their latest mobile processor would enable on-device AI processes such as video generation.
We’re already there, albeit not completely. Amidst all the hype show with hit-and-miss AI tricks for smartphone users, the debate barely ever went beyond the glitzy presentations about the new processors and ever-evolving chatbots.
OpenAI released its Sora text-to-video generation tool late in 2024, and expanded it to the European market at the end of February this year. It seems the next avenue for Sora is the ChatGPT app.
According to a TechCrunch report, which cites internal conversations, OpenAI is planning to bring the video creation AI tool to ChatGPT. So far, the video generator has been available only via a web client, and has remained exclusive to paid users.
These days, 8GB of RAM is the baseline for Apple devices (the minimum amount required to run Apple Intelligence.) Several insiders have already suggested the iPhone 17 Pro could see a RAM boost up to 12GB, and now Jeff Pu of GFHK Tech Research has thrown his hat into the ring — and he agrees that it’s likely.
For the past several generations, each new series of iPhone has seen an upgrade to its internals. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max both had 8GB of RAM compared to the 6GB in their non-Pro variants, while the full iPhone 16 lineup has 8GB. A jump to 12GB for the iPhone 17 Pro suggests it could have access to yet-to-be-announced Apple Intelligence features, but it also makes the phone more future-proof.
Upgrade your lifestyleDigital Trends helps readers keep tabs on the fast-paced world of tech with all the latest news, fun product reviews, insightful editorials, and one-of-a-kind sneak peeks.
