Apple has been building artificial intelligence abilities for release in iOS18 to compete with ChatGPT, Copilot and Google Gemini. The new Apple AI release date announcement could happen as soon as Apple’s WWDC conference in June. It has been testing the AI features and will release it to third-party software makers as soon as this year, according to anonymous sources.

This means Apple is getting ready to make its move into generative AI and large language models, the technology behind popular chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The company recently announced Apple Keyframer that can compete with DALLE - 3 from Open AI, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion to create images from text prompts.

Apple has always been a company to enter the playing field after the other major offerings have been made. They have a savvy strategy of noticing what other releases of a product or service do well or lack, and double down on improving those in their first offering.

Additionally, plans are in place to integrate AI capabilities into the upcoming version of macOS, known as Glow. However, Apple is adopting a cautious strategy towards AI advancement, indicating that some improvements may not materialize for several years.

Apple is also pursuing additional AI innovations, to generate Apple Music playlists (Spotify does this) and create slideshows in Keynote, its alternative to PowerPoint.It’s also considering an updated version of Spotlight, which is Apple's systemwide search functionality.

Other things happening on the artificial intelligence front with Apple:

1. Xcode AI Assistant:

• Apple is reportedly developing an AI tool for its Xcode app development software. This tool, similar to Microsoft's Copilot, would use AI to automate coding tasks, suggest code completions, and write test cases.

2. Image Animation Tool:

• Apple recently unveiled its Keyframer research tool that can animate static images based on text descriptions. This tool leverages large language models to understand the user's intent and generate animations accordingly.

• It's important to note that this is currently a research project and not yet available for public use.

Additional considerations:

• It's possible that there are other, unannounced AI tools being developed by Apple, but the two mentioned above are the ones currently generating the most news.

• Remember that information about unreleased products can change, so it's best to wait for official announcements from Apple for confirmation.