Apple is building the ChatGPT rival it swore it didn’t want

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Apple has long steered clear of directly competing with the likes of ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, insisting it cared more about slick hardware and user privacy than racing into the messy world of AI chatbots.

Well, not anymore: A new Bloomberg report says Apple’s new “Answers, Knowledge, and Information” team is secretly cooking up its own answer engine, a ChatGPT-style web spider designed to leapfrog Siri’s limitations and finally give Apple a real shot in the AI arms race.

This pivot isn’t just a one-off experiment. Former Siri head Robby Walker, who once called delays on Siri “ugly and embarrassing,” is leading a full-court press to leap from “also-ran” to “next big thing.”

The team is on a hiring spree in Silicon Valley and Beijing, aiming to wire Apple products—Siri, Spotlight, Safari—with smarter answers and web-crawling features.

It’s a striking reversal from the Apple that once mocked voice assistants and warned about AI privacy boogeymen.

But with its $20 billion Google search deal under fire and even Tim Cook admitting tech is changing fast, Apple finally seems ready to compete in the search and answer game.

Bottom line: Apple is moving from “privacy-first” hardware to building cloud-powered brains. The race is on—not just to beat Siri’s past, but to create the next must-have AI that’s actually useful in your daily life.

But here’s what really matters—this isn’t just a story about Silicon Valley’s latest ego trip. Apple’s move could shape the way millions of people interact with technology every day.

If Apple cracks the code and delivers real-time, reliable answers without betraying its promise of privacy, it could spark the biggest shift in how we search, learn, and make decisions since the iPhone itself. But that’s a massive “if.”

The company faces huge hurdles: serious brain drain to competitors, public frustration after failed Siri rollouts, and a tough privacy balancing act as it brings more cloud AI into the picture.

For Apple fans and skeptics alike, the big question is whether the company can reinvent itself—and our expectations—without losing what made it special in the first place.

Will this change how you use your devices—or do you have concerns about privacy and the tech giant’s new direction? Drop your thoughts in the comments below, or join the conversation on our Facebook or Twitter

Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com.