Sources say that Apple engineers are developing ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence, which is expected to be used in Siri.

CTOnews.com, March 15 (Xinhua) Apple is testing generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) technologies that could one day be used in Siri virtual assistants, despite fundamental problems with the way Siri is designed, according to the New York Times.

Apple reportedly introduced Apple's large language model and other artificial intelligence tools to employees at its annual artificial intelligence summit last month. Apple engineers, including members of the Siri team, are testing language-generated concepts "every week" to cope with the rise of chatbots like ChatGPT.

According to the report, these next-generation artificial intelligence technologies highlight the fact that Siri, Alexa and other voice assistants have wasted their lead in artificial intelligence competitions. Siri, in particular, faces multiple obstacles that hinder it from achieving meaningful improvement. John Burkey, a former Apple engineer who worked at Apple, worked on Siri and was responsible for improving Siri performance in 2014, said Siri was built on "clumsy code" and it would take weeks to add even basic features.

The "bulky" design of Siri makes it difficult for engineers to add new features. For example, Burkey says, Siri's database contains a large number of phrases from nearly 20 languages. "it's like a big snowball." This means that simple updates, such as adding new phrases to the dataset, also need to rebuild the entire Siri database, which can take six weeks, while adding more complex features such as new search tools can take up to a year.

So, in Burkey's view, Siri can't be a "creative assistant" like ChatGPT.

CTOnews.com noted that DigiTimes also reported last week that there was growing interest in generative artificial intelligence under the catalysis of ChatGPT, prompting big companies such as Apple, Meta and Amazon to reassess the way the technology was developed.