Apple to challenge ChatGPT and Google with own AI

Apple is working on a new large language model (LLM), ReALM, which performs as well as the GPT-4, regarded as the current state-of-the-art, and aims to understand context.

ReALM, which stands for Reference Resolution As Language Modeling, was investigated in an Apple research paper to demonstrate how reference resolution could be incorporated into an LLM.

Reference resolution is a method of teaching an LLM to understand context, which is a significant step for artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots to improve the chat flow with a user.

The paper was written by Joel Ruben Antony Moniz, Soundarya Krishnan, Melis Ozyildirim, Prathamesh Saraf, Halim Cagri Ates, Yuan Zhang, Hong Yu, and Nidhi Rajshree.

“Being able to understand context, including references like [those that carry ambiguous meanings such as ‘they’ or ‘that’], is essential for a conversational assistant that aims to allow a user to naturally communicate their requirements to an agent, or to have a conversation with it,” Moniz et al. state.

The paper uses AI in the context of a virtual assistant, in Apple’s case this would be Siri, to improve its ability to understand context when engaging in a conversation.

ReaLM can also process on-screen content and react accordingly. ChatGPT can’t do this, although it can process PDF and media files.

The paper indicates that ReaLM will be available in four sizes: ReaLM-80M, ReaLM-250M, ReaLM-1B, and ReaLM-3B.

The “M” and “B” at the end refer to the number of parameters in millions and billions, respectively.

Moniz et al. benchmarked the four models against OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, and it seems that even ReaLM-80M, its smallest model, is on par with GPT-4.

ReaLM-250M,-1B, and -3B outperformed GPT-4 in conversational, synthetic, and on-screen datasets.

Apple drew attention to its AI development when it acquired AI startup DarwinAI in mid-March.

A Bloomberg report also suggests that the tech giant is negotiating the use of Google Gemini for its upcoming iOS 18 update.

Google owns Android, Apple’s biggest competitor in smartphone and tablet operating systems.

Samsung, Apple’s biggest smartphone competitor, also partnered with Google to use Gemini to implement AI features into their Galaxy S24 flagship smartphone.

Apple will be hosting their Worldwide Developers Conference on 10–14 June, and has hinted that AI will feature heavily.