Apple is building its own AI-powered search chatbot, aiming to rival ChatGPT and other leading AI platforms. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company has formed a new internal unit called Answers, Knowledge and Information (AKI) to develop advanced Apple AI search technologies.

Led by former Siri chief Robbie Walker, the AKI team is working on both a standalone Apple AI search app and backend infrastructure to enhance Siri, Spotlight, and Safari search results with intelligent, AI-driven answers.

While the official launch of the Apple AI chatbot is still a way off, the company is rapidly expanding its AI efforts — hiring search engine specialists, investing heavily in AI research, and exploring acquisitions, including rumored interest in Perplexity AI.

Recently, Apple’s ML researchers unveiled FastVLM, a vision-language model that runs directly on iPhones, delivering faster and more accurate image analysis thanks to the FastViT-HD encoder.

With these developments, Apple appears poised to enter the AI search engine race in full force