Apple is working on an artificial intelligence-based tool that could help developers create apps for its products, a new report claims.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple has been working on the software for a year, and it will be part of the tech giant’s next major version of its Xcode software. It could be launched “as early as this year,” the report said.
Xcode is Apple’s programming environment used to develop apps for all of the company’s software platforms, including iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
Apple confirms: Killing web apps on home screen in EU
Details about the new tool are scarce, but Gurman says it will be similar to Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, and will use AI to “predict and complete blocks of code.” Apple may also be considering using artificial intelligence to generate code for app testing.
Launched in 2021, Github Copiilot is an AI tool that can generate code based on natural language queries. In other words, a developer can describe the problem they want to solve in a text query, and Copilot will generate working code snippets. OpenAI’s ChatGPT can also be used to generate code in a variety of programming languages.
The announcement of this new tool could happen “as early as June”, during Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).
With AI seemingly permeating every aspect of our digital lives (we’ve seen several big AI announcements this month alone, including a new OpenAI tool that allows users to create realistic videos from text queries, as well as Google’s new language model), this move by Apple is more makes it inevitable rather than innovative. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said that Apple will make a big AI announcement later in 2024. He didn’t share any additional details, but the new AI-enhanced Xcode could be part of that announcement.