The story is that Apple has been quietly working on artificial intelligence tools that could challenge those of OpenAI, Alphabet's Google and others for ages. It never released a product because it had yet to devise a clear strategy for releasing the technology to consumers.

The iPhone maker has built its own framework to create large language models -- the AI-based systems at the heart of new offerings like ChatGPT and Google's Bard -- according to people with knowledge of the efforts. With that foundation, known as "Ajax," Apple also has created a chatbot service that some engineers call "Apple GPT."

According to Bloomberg the AI push has become a major effort for Apple, with several teams collaborating on the project.

This is not because Apple needs to catch up on the AI game but because it wants to address potential privacy concerns related to the technology, apparently.

Apple employees say the tool replicates Bard, ChatGPT and Bing AI and doesn't include any novel features or technology. The system is accessible as a web application and has a stripped-down design not meant for public consumption. As such, Apple has yet to make any plans to release it to consumers, though it is actively working to improve its underlying models.

So, in other words, Apple has no product which is any different from anyone else’s, and if it did have one, it would not be releasing it because it does not know what to do with it. This might seem odd as Apple did seem to have a handle on early AI with its Siri product