Reports that Apple and Meta are in talks for a disputed AI partnership

UPDATED: June 25, 2024, 8:03 a.m. EDT A new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman disputes the Wall Street Journal report, claiming that Apple rejected the idea of ​​a partnership with Meta and that no formal conversations ever took place. The story has been updated to include this information.

Meta AI could be coming to iPhones and other Apple devices, depending on who you believe.

According to The Wall Street JournalMeta and Apple are in talks for a potential partnership that would integrate Meta’s generative AI model into Apple Intelligence.

It seems that Apple and Meta are setting aside a long-standing feud on privacy and revenue sharing in favor of establishing a foothold in the competition for AI dominance. For Meta, the partnership could mean wider distribution of its AI features. For Apple, this would protect the company from everything an over-reliance on its OpenAI partnership.

At WWDC earlier this month, Apple announced a deal with OpenAI that brings ChatGPT to iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. But that’s not the only AI model Apple is considering adding to its operating systems. In a post-keynote chat with iJustine, senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi said Apple is also looking to integrate Google Gemini and other AI models.

“We think that ultimately users will have a preference for certain templates they want to use, perhaps a template that’s great for creative writing or one they prefer for coding. So we want to allow users to bring whatever model they want,” Federighi said.

It now appears that Meta AI could be one of the models that Apple users may choose to interact with. THE Newspaper also said that Apple is also in talks with Anthropic (which makes ChatGPT competitor Claude) and Perplexity, which is an AI-powered search engine.

However, Bloomberg Mark Gurman published on Tuesday June 25 a report challenging the WSJ, stating that Apple rejected a partnership with Meta months ago and no formal discussions had taken place.

Apple Intelligence is the set of AI features the company has developed for iPhones, iPads and Macs. But Apple chose to supplement AI capabilities with ChatGPT to improve Siri functionality and features like email composing and image generation. Notably, Apple touted a privacy-first approach with the ChatGPT announcement and says users will be asked for permission before sharing information with ChatGPT.

The potential partnership with Meta raises the question of how Apple will protect user privacy, since Meta doesn’t have a great track record in this area. Meta AI is trained on user posts and other data shared publicly on its platforms and is almost impossible to opt out of.

It’s unclear what the terms of the deal would be. But we know that Apple “paid” for OpenAI with distribution and access instead of money. A partnership with Apple could also increase Meta’s user base and increase its stature in the cutthroat race for generative AI.