Internal testing at Apple has revealed impressive progress on their ChatGPT rival, with multiple AI models of varying complexity now in active development. The company has created versions containing 3 billion, 7 billion, 33 billion, and 150 billion parameters, with the most advanced cloud-based model reportedly approaching the quality of recent ChatGPT releases according to internal benchmarks using Apple’s “Playground” testing tool.12

Beyond these foundational models, Apple has developed a chatbot called “Knowledge” that can access the internet to gather and synthesize information from multiple sources.1 This project is led by Robby Walker, though Siri was recently removed from his command. While AI chief John Giannandrea initially hesitated to transform Siri into a ChatGPT-like assistant, Apple executives are now pushing to position Siri as a true competitor in the conversational AI space.23

The upcoming iOS 18 will preview some AI capabilities at WWDC 2025, though the full LLM-powered Siri transformation won’t arrive until iOS 19 in 2026.1 Meanwhile, Apple is expanding its AI ecosystem by allowing developers to build with its proprietary AI models2 and has already rolled out Apple Intelligence features in multiple languages including French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean.3

Apple is also exploring partnerships to enhance its AI offerings while development continues. The company is reportedly in talks with Perplexity to integrate their AI service into both Siri and Safari search, and Google’s Gemini is expected to be added to iOS 26 as an alternative to ChatGPT.4 These strategic collaborations may help Apple bridge the gap while addressing the “philosophical differences” among executives that have contributed to the delayed timeline for its homegrown AI solutions.5