CEO Tim Cook faces tough decisions on AI

Ahead of Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, there were strong hints that the company planned to partner with one of the two rivals to bring advanced AI to the iPhone.

Recent issues with ChatGPT and Gemini AI are giving Tim Cook a headache

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Apple had signed a deal with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, with the two companies “finalizing terms for a deal to use ChatGPT features in Apple’s iOS 18.”

Meanwhile, talks with Google appear to be ongoing. Apple was said to be in talks with Google in March about a deal to integrate Gemini AI into the iPhone. Researcher Mark Gurman reported this month that talks with Google are ongoing.

CEO Tim Cook is reportedly an avid ChatGPT user, so he has reason to be interested in what OpenAI has to offer. The problem is that Apple and Google have already signed lucrative deals to bring Google's search products to the iPhone, which will earn Apple $20 billion by 2022. That's why Apple can go along with Google when it comes to AI.

However, recent developments are making it difficult for Tim Cook, leaving him with no clear choice because both OpenAI and Google have problems with AI and could cause him headaches in the future.

Take ChatGPT, for example. OpenAI was embroiled in controversy this week after Scarlett Johansson made a statement accusing it of using a voice “eerily similar” to hers for a new voice feature in its latest AI prototype, GPT-4o. OpenAI boss Sam Altman has denied using a similar voice without her permission.

Still, the incident reveals a deeper problem with OpenAI that has Apple worried. Some artists, publishers, and others worry that ChatGPT’s success is built on the use of other people’s work without their consent. This is especially true in the context of OpenAI facing difficult legal battles, with the Authors Guild suing the company over concerns that writers’ work is being used in models to generate profit.

Google doesn’t offer an easy alternative either. A new feature called AI Overviews, introduced at Google I/O 2024, has been rolling out “disastrously” in the US this week. Countless users have taken to social media to share shocking examples of Google’s failed attempts to use AI to generate contextual summaries in response to search queries. In one case, it asked users to apply “non-toxic glue” to pizza to fix the problem of cheese not sticking to it.

In another case, AI Overviews said that America had a Muslim president “Barack Hussein Obama” to answer the question: “How many Muslim presidents has America had?”

This puts Apple in a difficult position. Apple desperately needs an AI strategy to give its iPhone a facelift at a time when sales are falling in key markets like China. But problems with some of its major AI language models have forced the company to consider strategic partnerships with either company, which has its own AI problems. Clearly, neither option is easy for CEO Tim Cook.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/ceo-tim-cook-doi-mat-voi-quyet-dinh-kho-khan-ve-ai-185240527104309395.htm