Apple is building a new AI team to create a "ChatGPT-like" answer engine, signaling a major push to enhance Siri, Spotlight, and take on Google Search.
Apple is hiring for a new "Answers, Knowledge, and Information" team to develop its next generation of AI-powered services.
Apple Is Building A 'ChatGPT-Like' Answer Engine
CUPERTINO, CA – Apple is significantly ramping up its artificial intelligence ambitions, signaling a major push into generative AI search with the formation of a new "Answers, Knowledge, and Information" team. The company is actively hiring for more than a dozen engineering roles for the new unit, which is tasked with enhancing core services like Siri, Spotlight, and Safari.
The job postings reveal a focus on developing Large Language Models (LLMs) to answer user queries by accessing private, on-device data with a heavy emphasis on privacy. However, this initiative is believed to be part of a much larger project. According to reporting from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is in the early stages of building a "ChatGPT-like search experience," a powerful "answer engine" designed to crawl the web and provide real-time, conversational answers. This move represents Apple's most direct challenge yet to Google's search dominance.
The public job listings provide a rare and concrete glimpse into the specific capabilities Apple is trying to build. One particularly revealing listing is for a Staff Machine Learning Engineer, tasked with improving Siri’s capacity to answer "personal domain questions" using a user’s private, on-device documents with "privacy protections as a key design element."
This aligns perfectly with the more personalized version of Siri that Apple showcased at WWDC 2024, where users were shown asking Siri about personal details pulled directly from on-device apps like Mail and Messages. This focus on "personal context" is a core part of Apple's AI strategy.
Beyond Personalization: The "Answer Engine" Ambition
While on-device personalization is a confirmed part of Apple's public roadmap, the new team's mandate appears to be far broader. The "Knowledge" and "Information" parts of the team's name point to a second, parallel track of development: a system for answering general knowledge questions about the wider world.
This is where reporting from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman becomes crucial. He revealed that Apple is in the early stages of building a "ChatGPT-like search experience," internally referred to as an "answer engine." Unlike traditional search, an answer engine uses an LLM to synthesize information from multiple sources and provide a direct, conversational answer. Gurman's report suggests Apple is even contemplating a standalone search app.
The Two Tracks of Apple's AI Strategy
The latest news clarifies that Apple is pursuing a sophisticated, two-pronged AI strategy:
- On-Device Personal Intelligence: The new, more powerful Siri that uses on-device processing to understand a user's personal context while maintaining privacy.
- Cloud-Powered General Knowledge: The newer, more secretive "answer engine" project that would be cloud-based, as it would need to crawl the web constantly to provide up-to-date answers.
The challenge for Apple will be to seamlessly integrate these two systems into a single, unified Siri that can handle both personal and general queries.
The Long Road Ahead: Delays and Challenges
While the ambition is clear, Apple is still playing catch-up. A fully conversational, LLM-powered Siri is reportedly delayed until at least iOS 27, meaning it is still several years away. Apple's deliberate pace is a reflection of the immense technical and ethical challenges involved, particularly given the company's brand identity built on privacy and reliability. For now, the formation of the "Answers, Knowledge, and Information" team is the clearest signal yet that Apple's long-term AI vision is far grander than what has been publicly revealed.