Apple’s ChatGPT Rival? iPhone Maker Starts Testing AI-Powered ‘Ask’ For Customer Service

In a move to enhance its technical support, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has launched a pilot program for a new ChatGPT-like AI tool named “Ask.”

What Happened: The “Ask” tool, akin to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, will be utilized by a select group of AppleCare support advisors to generate automatic responses to customer’s technical inquiries, reported Macrumors.

The tool pulls relevant data from Apple’s internal knowledge base to answer questions, and advisors can rate the responses as “helpful” or “unhelpful.”

Apple is promoting the use of “Ask” over traditional search methods for addressing complex or unfamiliar issues. The responses generated by the chatbot are factual, traceable, and beneficial as they are linked to Apple’s internal knowledge base.

Apple intends to expand the tool to more advisors in the future, after gathering feedback. The company is expected to adopt generative AI extensively this year, with iOS 18 expected to feature many new generative AI features across various applications.

Generative AI gained popularity in late 2022 with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a chatbot that responds to text and voice prompts like a human. Apple’s “Ask” tool is seen as a step in the same direction.