Apple CEO Tim Cook stated DeepSeek’s AI fashions symbolize “innovation that drives effectivity” throughout an earnings name Thursday whereas fielding questions from analysts in regards to the iPhone maker’s AI ambitions.
“In normal, I feel innovation that drives effectivity is an efficient factor. And, you recognize, that’s what you see in that mannequin,” stated Cook, responding to an analyst’s query about how DeepSeek’s AI fashions would affect Apple’s margins.
Cook went on to notice that Apple leverages a hybrid mannequin for its AI, by which it runs some easy duties regionally — utilizing its personal AI fashions on its system’s customized silicon chips. Meanwhile, different, extra sophisticated duties run within the cloud by partnerships with AI mannequin suppliers.
Cook additionally stated Apple has all the time taken a “prudent and deliberate” strategy to all these expenditures.
Apple at the moment solely has one AI partnership, with OpenAI, which permits ChatGPT to reply advanced questions from iPhone customers in a non-public cloud.
OpenAI claimed this week to have proof that its AI fashions had been used to coach DeepSeek’s AI fashions by a course of known as distillation. If true, that may violate OpenAI’s utilization insurance policies and undermine DeepSeek’s accomplishments.
That didn’t cease Apple’s CEO from tossing a praise towards DeepSeek.
Apple has indicated its OpenAI partnership is just not unique, and it could combine different firms’ AI fashions into the iPhone sooner or later, akin to Google’s Gemini or Anthropic’s Claude. Cook didn’t go so far as to counsel Apple would combine DeepSeek’s fashions, nonetheless.
Beyond OpenAI’s allegations of IP theft, a number of tech analysts have urged that DeepSeek’s AI fashions had been educated with considerably extra GPUs and computation prices than the corporate claims. That would imply DeepSeek’s AI fashions weren’t educated fairly as effectively as some suspected. Still, the Chinese AI lab sells entry to its fashions at a steep low cost in contrast with what American AI labs cost.
Investors additionally peppered Cook with questions in regards to the success of Apple Intelligence.
The phased launch of Apple’s AI options doesn’t seem to have created the speedy enhance to iPhone gross sales that some predicted. Instead, gross sales barely declined within the final quarter, in comparison with final yr.
Hoping to spin the decline extra favorably, Cook claimed the corporate noticed stronger gross sales in areas the place Apple Intelligence had rolled out than areas the place it had not.
Apple has confronted different points with its AI options, past their lack of availability. It just lately paused its AI summaries of stories articles this month after the function produced deceptive headlines. In one case, Apple Intelligence hallucinated and adjusted a BBC information headline to incorrectly learn that Luigi Mangione, the person charged within the homicide of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself, which was unfaithful.
