(Credit: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Apple is working on a ChatGPT-like product, and it is being created by a new team assembled earlier this year called Answers, Knowledge and Information, or AKI, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
Internally, they are calling the product an "answer engine," and it will offer AI-powered search capabilities popularized by OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini AI.
Currently, Apple lacks a product of that kind. While users can connect Siri and Apple intelligence with ChatGPT to make it crawl the web and find answers to their queries, Apple doesn't have its own standalone app to do the same.
According to Gurman, the AKI team is exploring whether the rumored "answer engine" could fill that gap. They are also working on improving the search capabilities of Siri, Spotlight, and Safari. The team is led by Robby Walker, who reports directly to Apple's AI chief John Giannandrea.
Interestingly, as Gurman points out, after unveiling OpenAI as its first AI partner at WWDC24, Apple had dismissed the idea of building its own chatbot, stating there wasn't enough consumer interest.
A lot has changed since then. Several of the AI-powered Siri features Apple announced back then have yet to roll out, leading to lawsuits and internal shake-ups. Meanwhile, generative AI chatbots have seen a sharp rise in popularity, with about 36% of users now opting for them over traditional search engines.
Unsurprisingly, according to an earlier Bloomberg report, CEO Tim Cook is now betting big on AI. He reportedly believes the AI revolution is "as big or bigger" than the internet, smartphones, cloud computing, and apps.
In an all-hands meeting, sources tell Bloomberg, he also told staffers that despite a late arrival, Apple can dominate the AI space. "Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab… We will make the investment to do it," he said, while drawing comparisons to the company's past.
"We've rarely been first… There was a PC before the Mac; there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod," he added.
For now, though, Apple's only major AI product is Apple Intelligence. It can summarize content, compose or rewrite text, edit photos, and generate Genmoji images, with translation capabilities expected to arrive soon.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.