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Apple is reportedly considering acquiring a major AI company to give Siri a much-needed brain transplant. An interview by CNBC with CEO Tim Cook seemingly revealed Apple’s intentions, which don’t come as a huge surprise. After years of promising updates and consistent underdelivery, Siri and Apple Intelligence in general are still in need of a sizeable overhaul to bring them closer to competitors.
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In the interview, Cook said Apple was “open” to a merger and acquisitions deal, so it seems like a pretty likely outcome. No specific partner has been mentioned, but rumours have been suggesting for a few months that Anthropic and OpenAI are on the shortlist. Of the two, the latter would make the most sense, considering Apple is already partnered with them for ChatGPT integration.
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However, acquiring either of these companies would be incredibly expensive, so any work with them would likely be a partnership to develop an entirely new LLM for Siri, essentially rebuilding it from the ground up.
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Some have also suggested that Apple could instead acquire Perplexity, which is valued at around $18 billion. Either way, the openness to collaborate from Apple is a clear admission that things have not gone well in regards to AI. They were originally slow out of the blocks in developing their own AI platform, leaving others like Google and Samsung to get ahead, and Siri suffered as a result.
At the moment, complicated requests are passed off from Siri to ChatGPT, effectively nullifying any real usefulness for Apple’s native AI assistant. Cook and co have realised this now and come to terms with the fact that they will need to spend big, whatever they decide to do next, in order to keep pace.
