Apple announced at WWDC that ChatGPT will be part of the iPhone’s Apple AI experience in iOS 18 without inviting Sam Altman on the stage.
I’m a longtime iPhone user, a fan of gen AI products, and a ChatGPT Plus subscriber. All of that tells you that I loved seeing that Apple went with OpenAI’s ChatGPT for iOS 18 integration at WWDC. Of all the chatbots out there, I wanted ChatGPT to come to iOS 18 because it’s currently the best option, all things considered.
As part of the Apple Intelligence suite of features, Apple’s smarter Siri will let you connect to ChatGPT for certain things, though it’ll always ask if you want to use OpenAI’s chatbot for help before sending any data to OpenAI. Also, ChatGPT will not be the exclusive partner for iOS 18, with Apple having confirmed at WWDC that other chatbots will be available down the road.
That particular admission from Craig Federighi on stage, combined with Apple’s announcement of ChatGPT functionality for iOS 18, signaled that OpenAI doesn’t have Apple’s full confidence. Put differently, OpenAI missed out on a historic opportunity despite scoring a big win for ChatGPT.
Where was Sam Altman?
Rumors preceding the event said that Sam Altman would join Apple at WWDC to announce the ChatGPT partnership. That didn’t happen. Instead, Federighi walked us through ChatGPT integration in iOS 18 towards the end of the event.
Now, rumors aren’t always right. Also, OpenAI’s absence might not be a big deal. Apple had specific plans for the WWDC keynote, and they might not have included Altman to begin with.
