Apple 'Answer Engine,' Google Engagement Down, AI Threat to Shopping Ads

Report: Apple 'Answer Engine' Coming

We've speculated for years about the possibility and potential impact of an Apple search engine. Yet Google has paid Apple billions annually to not develop its own search engine. When the antitrust court's remedies decision finally comes this month, it will likely spell the end of the Google-Apple default search deal. At the same time, Apple has continued to fall behind in AI and is losing researchers to Meta. To put it bluntly, Siri blows by comparison to ChatGPT, and the ChatGPT Siri integration and implementation is weak. Investors are increasingly pressuring Apple to show AI progress. During the most recent earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said that the company was "significantly growing our investments." He added, "We’re making good progress on a more personalized Siri, and we do expect to release the features next year." Cook also said that Apple was open to acquiring an AI company: "We’re very open to M&A that accelerates our roadmap." In that larger context, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg is reporting that "Apple quietly formed a new team called Answers, Knowledge and Information, or AKI ... with the goal of creating a new ChatGPT-like search experience. It would be an "answer engine" and "capable of crawling the web to respond to general-knowledge questions."