Siri Chatbot prototype nears ChatGPT quality, but hallucinates more than Apple wants
A new report claims that internally, Apple has already been testing Large Language Models for Siri that are vastly more powerful than the shipping Apple Intelligence, but executives disagree about when to release it.

Internally, Siri us close to ChatGPT level accuracy.
Backing up AppleInsider's position that Apple is not behind on AI, the company has regularly been publishing research showing its progress moving the field forward. Now according to Bloomberg, Apple has already been working with AI systems considerably more power than the on-device Apple Intelligence it has shipped so far.
Specifically, the report says that internally, Apple is using multiple different models with ever greater complexity. Apple is said to be testing models with 3 billion, 7 billion, 33 billion, and 150 billion parameters.
For comparison, Apple in 2024 said that Apple Intelligence's foundation language models were of the order of 3 billion parameters.
That version of Apple Intelligence is intentionally small in order for it to be possible to run on-device instead of requiring all prompts and requests to be sent to the cloud. The larger versions are cloud-based, and in the case of the 150 billion parameter model, now also said to approach the quality of ChatGPT's most recent releases.
However, there reportedly remain concerns over AI hallucinations. Apple is said to have held off releasing this Apple Intelligence model in part because of this, implying that the level of hallucinations is too high.
There is said to be another reason for not yet shipping this cloud-based and much improved Siri Chatbot, though. It is claimed that there are philosophical differences between Apple's senior executives over the release.
It's conceivable that these differences solely concern each executive's tolerance for hallucinations in Apple Intelligence. However, there is no further detail.
Previously, it's been reported that former Siri chief executive chief John Giannandrea is against releasing it yet, others in the executive staff are more keen to launch a Siri Chatbot.
Perhaps because of this internal disagreement, it is now also claimed that there will be fewer Apple Intelligence announcements at WWDC than expected. The whole WWDC keynote is said to be smaller in scope than previous years, but it is still expected to feature a dramatic redesign of the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, to exploit Apple's user interface lessons learned on the Apple Vision Pro.
Rumor Score: Likely
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It’s remarkable the consistency with which this pattern repeats, yet even people who consider themselves Apple enthusiasts don’t see it. Tech competitors “race ahead” with an iteration of some technology, while Apple seemingly languishes. Apple is doomed. Then Apple comes out “late” with their version of it, and the initial peanut gallery reception pronounces it too little, too late.
Then within a couple of years, Apple’s version is the gold standard and the others -those cutting-edge innovators- race to catch up, because “first” is often also “half-baked.”
In the news this week, it was exposed that RFK Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” report was evidently an AI-produced document, replete with hallucinations, most notably in the bibliography, and of course it was. This is what happens when the current cohort of AI models are uncritically used to produce a desired result, without any understanding of how profoundly bad these AI models are. When I read about this in the news, I decided to experiment with it myself. Using MS Copilot -in commercial release as part of MS Word- I picked a subject and asked for a report taking a specific, dubious position on it, with citations and a bibliography. After it dutifully produced the report, I started checking the bibliography, and one after another, failed to find the research papers that Copilot used to back the position taken. I didn’t check all the references, so it’s possible some citations were real, but finding several that weren’t was sufficient to bin the whole thing. It’s bad enough when humans intentionally produce false and misleading information, but when a stock office product will do it for you with no disclaimers or warnings, should that product really be on the market? I also once asked ChatGPT to write a story about green eggs and ham, in the style of Dr. Seuss. It then plaigerized the actual Seuss story, almost verbatim, in a clear abuse of copyright law. This is the stuff that Apple is supposedly trailing behind.
So the report here that Apple is developing AI but, unlike their “cutting edge” competitors, not releasing something that produces unreliable garbage, suggests that no, they’re not behind. They’re just repeating the same pattern again of carefully producing something of high quality and reliability, and in a form that is intuitively useful, rather than a gimmicky demonstration that they can do a thing, whether it’s useful or not. Eventually they’ll release something that consistently produces reliable information, and likely does so while respecting copyright and other intellectual property rights. The test will be that not only will it be unlikely to hallucinate in ways that mislead or embarrass its honest users, it will actually disappoint those with more nefarious intent. When asked to produce a report with dubious or false conclusions, it won’t comply like a sociopathic sycophant. It will respond by telling the user that the reliable data not only doesn’t support the requested position, but actually refutes it. Hopefully this will be a feature that Apple uses to market their AI when it’s released.
P.P.S. I just repeated the above experiment in Pages, using Apple’s link to Chat GPT. It also produced hallucinated references. I just chased down the first citation in the bibliography it created. Searching for the cited article didn’t turn up anything. I did find the cited journal, went to it and searched for the cited title, got nothing. Searched for the authors, got nothing. Finally, I browsed to find the issue supposedly containing the referenced article, and that article does not exist. So Apple gets demerits for subbing in ChatGPT in their uncharacteristic worry that they not be perceived as being “late.” This part does not fit their usual pattern, with the exception perhaps of their hastened switch to Apple Maps, based largely at first on third-party map data. In the long run, their divorce from Google maps was important, as location services was rapidly becoming a core OS function, not just a sat nav driving convenience that can adequately be left to third party apps. The race to use AI is perhaps analog, but the hopefully temporary inclusion of ChatGPT’s garbage should be as embarrassing as those early Apple Maps with bridges that went underwater, etc.
But how long does it take until it is ready? At WWDC 2024, they introduced this what does not exist.
So count down since WWDC 2024..........
If you have no concerns (Apple) you too can be at the lead of the so-called AI pack as long as you Apple use the same solution which is to stay connected to the super computers back home when answering questions, Google, Meta, Microsoft and others don’t have any problems having you attached to them 24/7 feeding you answers like Alexa remember her?
The question is do you (the public) have a problem with it? I don’t think Apple‘s path is the same as their competition which one do you think will take longer to accomplish the hardware/software solution or we’ll just keep you connected to our super computer solution?
So a work in progress announcement which was clearly annunciated by Apple at WWDC June 2024 is a release? A release did occur to one country (the USA) four months later, with plenty of documentation, indicating that it was still an ongoing work in progress. What part of that is unclear?
https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence/
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/apple-intelligence-is-available-today-on-iphone-ipad-and-mac/. October 28, 2024 release to one country the USA and Apple still reiterated that it was an ongoing work in progress. The Message is still very clear?
The biggest part of the announcement at WWDC 24 was not the Apple intelligence announcement itself, the biggest most important was the fact that Apple indicated that they were going to use the M2 ultra’s as servers (which are now probably M3 ultras, jumping to M5) as part of their solution which meant that Apple has finally got off of their aversion (remember those three Apple engineers who ended up at Qualcomm?) to building the in house software/hardware infrastructure (Apple servers) using Apple Silicon M series solutions, long term Apple probably can’t rely on Intel, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, or AMD.