Author|Zhang Gravel
Produced by unnamed science and technology
With the popularity of ChatGPT, international technology giants led by Microsoft, Google, and Meta have "raced against time", or launched or upgraded their own large-model products, eager to seize the opportunity in the hottest track.
In contrast, Apple, the number one in the US stock market by value, is particularly calm. It has neither released large model products nor announced plans, and even the WDDC conference in the middle of the year did not bring unexpected product and system updates.
However, on July 20, Bloomberg Technology reporter Mark Gurman (Mark Gurman) released a blockbuster revelation: Apple has built a large language model development framework code-named "Ajax" internally, and developed a generative AI chatbot "Apple GPT".
Affected by this news, Apple's stock price once rose more than 2% from a falling state.
At the same time, Samsung, Apple's biggest rival in smartphone sales, and Google and Huawei, rivals in the field of mobile phone systems, have launched actions to embrace the big model.
01
Consumer electronics demand is sluggish
The public is looking forward to Apple's new AI story
On August 3, Eastern time, Apple released its financial results for the third quarter ended July 1, 2023. According to the financial report, Apple's revenue during the reporting period was $81.8 billion, down 1.4% year-on-year, and revenue has declined for three consecutive quarters; Net profit was US$19.881 billion, a year-on-year increase of 2.26%.
In June this year, Apple became the first company in the world with a market capitalization of more than $3 trillion. However, with the release of the latest earnings report, the data that was lower than market expectations caused Apple's stock price to fall, falling as much as 20.21%.
From the Q3 financial report, the main reason for the decline in revenue was the decline in sales of terminal products such as iPhone, Mac and iPad. Data show that iPhone sales were $39.669 billion, down 2.45% year-on-year; Mac sales were $6.840 billion, down 7.34% year-on-year; iPad sales fell the most, down 19.84% from $7.224 billion in the same period last year, to $5.79 billion.
Apple's continued decline in hardware sales is not unique, largely due to the continued sluggish demand for downstream consumer electronics. IDC data shows that in the second quarter of 2023, the global smartphone market shipments fell by 7.8% year-on-year; Global PC shipments fell 13.4% year-over-year, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of contraction.
In this regard, Apple CFO Luca Masteri does not seem optimistic, and said in the conference call after the earnings report that it is expected that the fourth quarter performance is still difficult to improve, and the revenue of iPad and Mac is likely to decline by a double-digit percentage in the fourth fiscal quarter.
Faced with the current situation of "iPhone can't be sold", the public and investors expect Apple to tell more new stories, such as the hottest topic at present: artificial intelligence.
Apple CEO Tim Cook did respond to public expectations at the time of the earnings report, saying that Apple has been working on generative AI and other models for years, "We see AI and machine learning as foundational core technologies, they are embedded in almost every product we make, starting this fall, the iPhone will have the ability to transcribe voice messages in real time, and we will continue to invest and innovate." ”
In addition, Cook also revealed that Apple has invested a lot of money in AI. So far, Apple's R&D spending this fiscal year reached $22.61 billion, about $3.12 billion higher than the same period last year. He pointed out at the conference that this extra "3 billion" is actually enabled by generative AI, and in the coming months, the company will increase its investment in this area.
Apple's job postings this year prove that Cook is right. According to the official website, Apple is recruiting hundreds of AI talents for offices around the world such as California, Seattle, and Paris, and the main work content is to engage in AI large-language model research, generating text, images or code according to users' simple prompts.
On August 10, for example, an Apple job posting was looking for a generative AI quality engineer, asking candidates for "experience building production applications, tools, and workflows using large language models and related toolchains such as langchain, as well as APIs," as well as "proficiency in "other operating systems such as iOS, macOS, or Unix/Linux."
02
Apple GPT is already in existence
The outbreak of ChatGPT this year has made people feel Bill Gates' foresight: he contacted the OpenAI team as early as 2016 and invested tens of billions of dollars. Although Google is slightly inferior in the field of AI large models, it has also launched groundbreaking AI products such as AlphaGo in previous years.
In 2011, Apple released Siri, a voice assistant integrated into the iPhone 4S, which was hailed as a breakthrough in AI technology at the time and sparked a wave of imitation. But in the decade or so since, Siri's progress has been limited. Compared with most of the current intelligent robots that can have smooth multi-round conversations with humans and write long articles, Siri, which can only advise users to search for answers, can be called "artificial intellectual disability".
Since the beginning of this year, when other technology manufacturers are crazy to increase the size of large models and continue to iterate new versions, Apple's attitude is still very cautious. In May, Cook acknowledged in an interview that he was using ChatGPT and said generative AI was a "very interesting" area that Apple would "carefully consider" its approach.
By July, Apple's actions on AI finally had clear news. According to Bloomberg's tech correspondent Mark Gurman, Apple is secretly developing AI tools that can compete with OpenAI, Google and others, but the company has yet to develop a clear strategy for releasing the technology.
Gurman said that Apple has gradually built its own large-language model framework "Ajax" starting in 2022 to build various machine learning projects on a shared foundation. Apple has used Ajax to improve Maps, Siri and more. Apple has also created a chatbot service based on Ajax, which some engineers call "Apple GPT."
Some Apple employees broke the news that "Apple GPT" is not much different from ChatGPT, Bard and other popular chatbots, and does not include any new functions or technologies. Currently, the system requires special approval for access and is not public-facing.
03
The AI field has been encircled, pursued, and blocked
Can Apple break through the siege
So, what direction will Apple, which already has its own big model, make efforts in the future?
In July, it was reported that Samsung was testing the integration of ChatGPT into its mobile browser. Earlier, there was also news that Samsung was considering changing the default browser from Google Search to Bing, because the latter preemptively added AI functions. Although Samsung later abandoned the idea, it can be seen that the nervousness and anxiety of mobile phone manufacturers in the face of the new wave of new technologies.
Among the top 5 global smartphone shipments in the first half of 2023, Samsung ranked first with 60.48 million units accounting for 21.72%, and Apple ranked second with 58.05 million units accounting for 19.32%, and the gap between the two is not large. If Samsung succeeds in the field of AI and makes people accustomed to using large model products such as ChatGPT on mobile phone browsers, it will undoubtedly have a great impact on the sales of Apple mobile phones. Therefore, it is very likely that Apple is already exploring the combination of "Apple GPT" and Safari.
The large model on the mobile browser has not yet landed, but some technology manufacturers are already using large models to upgrade and transform the mobile phone system, and this is also an area that Apple cannot give up.
Google unveiled PaLM 2, a new generation of large language models, in May. The model is divided into four categories in order of parameter scale from smallest to largest, among which the "gecko", with the smallest parameter scale, can run smoothly on mobile phones and can be used normally without even needing to be connected to the Internet.
At the press conference in May, Google said that its search, maps, email, video and other products will combine its own AI large model capabilities to launch new versions. Android 14 will also introduce generative AI features, namely AI text and AI wallpaper. The former is in Messages, the default SMS app for Android, where users can let AI automatically generate some simple conversation reply texts; The latter is a feature exclusive to Google Pixel devices, where users can let the AI automatically generate an image wallpaper based on the information they enter.
It can be seen that PaLM 2 is not only used on mobile, but will also become an important part of the Android ecosystem. On the other hand, Huawei's Hongmeng system is even more radical.
At the developer conference in August, Huawei officially released HarmonyOS 4 (HarmonyOS 4), which integrates the Pangu model. Yu Chengdong said that with the blessing of the large model, Huawei's smart assistant Xiaoyi's capabilities in the three directions of interaction, productivity improvement, and personalized service have been significantly enhanced. This means that what Xiaoyi can do is no longer limited to helping users play music and open software, but also helps users summarize and analyze long articles; Generate copywriting, picture secondary creation and other content; Complete more complex tasks such as ordering takeouts and tickets.
Huawei's Harmony 4.0 operating system is expected to debut with the Mate 60 this fall. At that time, people will know what experiences will be brought by the combination of the system blessed by the AI big model and the mobile terminal, what needs can be met by smarter Xiaoyi, and how much help will be given to the user's daily work and life.
Up to now, in the direction of the combination of artificial intelligence and operating system, Hongmeng is in the front, Android is second, and Apple's iOS has not yet exposed obvious measures. In iOS 17, released in June, Apple conservatively added some insignificant AI features, and the change to Siri for "artificial mental retardation" was simply that the wake word was shortened from "Hi Siri" to "Siri".
Today, people are still unclear about Apple's plans in the field of artificial intelligence and what results will be brought by Apple's investment in artificial intelligence. However, sources said that Apple hopes to make "major announcements related to artificial intelligence" sometime next year.
Apple has always been cautious about new technologies, and often not a technology pioneer. In the past, in addition to the core chip, all the technologies in the product chain of iPhone, iPad, and AirPods were provided by third parties. Apple's value lies in cohesion, and it seems to have a deep understanding of hardware products, which has evolved the ability to define products.
Perhaps, this time it can also stage a reversal plot again.