: Apple has an AI chatbot up its sleeve: report

United States

As Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. duke it out in the world of artificial-intelligence chatbots, Apple Inc. may harbor dreams of getting into the game as well.

Bloomberg News reported Wednesday that the consumer-electronics giant has created a chatbot service that’s being called “Apple GPT” by some engineers. That moniker is a play on ChatGPT, the chatbot launched by OpenAI, which counts Microsoft MSFT, -1.23% as an investor.

Don’t miss: Apple dubbed the most ‘boring’ buy-rated stock — and that’s actually a good thing

Apple AAPL, +0.71% has built out a framework to create large-language models, according to the Bloomberg story, and used that foundation to create its chatbot. The report said Apple’s AI push has become a “major effort” internally, with multiple teams working in collaboration.

The company didn’t immediately respond to a MarketWatch request for comment on the chatbot.

See also: Apple has a juicy $ 40 billion opportunity ahead of it

Apple, of course, is not new to the world of AI, even though the maker of iPhones and Macs hasn’t been as vocal as other technology players about its efforts in that arena. The company already uses AI behind the scenes across its business and to help underpin popular features like the Siri voice assistant, which relies on natural-language processing, and facial recognition.

The company has been more muted in its AI efforts than Microsoft, which has invested in OpenAI and integrated the company’s technology into its business, or Google parent Alphabet GOOG, -1.05% GOOGL, -1.40%, which has showed off its own Bard AI chatbot and teased a new search experience built around AI.

Read: AI will ‘fundamentally change’ Google search, Meta advertising

The term “AI” came up just four times on Apple’s last earnings call, and half of those mentions were from the analyst who got the AI discussion started on that call. In contrast, the terms “AI” or “artificial intelligence” garnered 65 mentions on Alphabet’s last earnings call and 53 mentions on Microsoft’s.