Apple Rejected Meta’s Partnership Proposal to Bring Its AI Chatbot Months Ago: Report

Apple, in an earlier report, was said to be in discussions with Meta to onboard it as a third-party artificial intelligence (AI) partner to power new features for its devices. However, a new report now claims that the two companies held brief talks months ago, where the social media giant proposed the integration of its AI chatbot into the iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices, but the Cupertino-based tech giant declined the proposal. The sticking point was said to be the privacy policies of Meta, of which Apple was not convinced.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, notes in a report, that Apple and Meta are currently not in talks to forge an AI partnership. Citing unnamed people with knowledge of the matter, the report claimed that Meta approached the iPhone maker in March to become an AI partner and integrate its Llama 3 AI model into the operating systems of Apple devices.

However, the discussions were held briefly and did not reach any formal stage, as per the report. The key hurdle is said to have been the privacy policies of Meta, which the tech giant did not find to be stringent enough. Notably, Meta has admitted that it is collecting user data to train its AI models.

Notably in 2018, after a whistleblower revealed that consulting company Cambridge Analytica collected user data belonging to millions of Facebook users, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an interview with Kara Swisher from Recode and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, “The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetised our customer — if our customer was our product. We’ve elected not to do that.”

Gurman highlights that at present, Apple is not looking to build a partnership with Facebook’s parent company.

However, there is truth to reports that Apple is seeking third-party AI partners to integrate their AI models into its devices. After reporting the same earlier this month, Gurman reiterated that the iPhone maker is currently exploring a deal to bring Google Gemini to its product ecosystem. Separately, it is also said to be in discussions with Anthropic to add Claude AI to the list of AI models it intends to offer users.