Apple analyst Mark Gurman revealed that Apple is in the process of developing an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot akin to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard. However, they have not yet finalized their decision on how they will release it to the public.

According to Bloomberg, the tech giant has purportedly designed its own framework named "Ajax" for the development of large language models (LLMs). Additionally, they are currently conducting internal testing of a chatbot, which some engineers have dubbed "Apple GPT."

Led by John Giannandrea, the head of machine learning and AI, and Craig Federighi, the top software engineering executive at Apple, the company has multiple teams dedicated to their latest AI project.

In contrast to other tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft, Apple has taken a cautious approach towards making major strides in AI. They even refrained from mentioning AI at their developer conference in June.

Despite this caution, Apple has discreetly incorporated advanced AI capabilities into products such as Apple Photos, on-device texting, and the recently launched mixed-reality headset Vision Pro. Nonetheless, analysts opine that Apple lags behind its competitors in fully embracing this emerging technology. 

The upcoming virtual assistant being developed by Apple will possess the ability to summarize text and answer queries based on its training data.

Presently, the AI chatbot is allegedly being employed for product prototyping. Employees liken the tool to other AI systems such as Bard, ChatGPT, and Bing AI, and it operates as a web application. Apple currently lacks a specific roadmap for these AI tools, but they have intentions of making a significant AI-related announcement sometime next year.

In contrast, ChatGPT for iOS was made available to Indian consumers in May. The free app allows users to synchronize their chat history across multiple devices. To utilize the app, a minimum iOS version of 16.1 or higher is required.