Apple is looking to integrate more AI chatbots, including Google’s Gemini, into its devices in the future, the company’s software chief has said.

On Monday, the tech giant confirmed it was working with OpenAI to build ChatGPT into the software of the newest iPhone, iPad and Mac devices as part of a major update to bring more generative AI tools to its devices.

Speaking to reporters after the announcements were made, Craig Federighi said Apple believed that AI models trained to be experts in specific fields were likely to become more common in the future, and the tech giant was keen to give users options to combine these with their own Apple Intelligence tools.

Apple’s own tools are designed to take advantage of the personal knowledge a user’s iPhone, iPad or Mac has of their schedule, habits and activities, rather than grab knowledge from the internet to help answer queries.

“We focused on a set of experiences that we felt were extremely core to the user experience of our platform, but we know that there are other models out there and some of them have really fantastic world knowledge and they may have domain knowledge – ultimately you can imagine a world where there’s a medical model that’s going to have an incredible depth of expertise, or a legal model,” Mr Federighi said.

“So people are going to want to draw on that kind of expertise that might not be part of our core, but something that they want to take advantage of, and so we see the capabilities of those models is really complementary to what we’re doing as an optional thing that users can draw on.”

On the decision to work first with OpenAI, the Apple executive said he believed ChatGPT was the current market leader.

“We wanted to start with the best, and we think ChatGPT from OpenAI and their new 4o model represents the best choice for our users today,” he said.

“We think ultimately, people are going to have a preference perhaps for certain models that they want to use – maybe one that great’s for creative writing, or one they prefer for coding, and so we want to enable users ultimately to bring the model of their choice and we’re going to look forward to doing integrations with models, like Google Gemini for instance, in the future.

“Nothing to announce right now, but that’s our direction.”