Siri’s Cousin? Apple May Add AI Chatbot to Support App
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Over the past year or so, we’ve seen a few scattered reports indicating that Apple has been exploring ways to integrate Apple Intelligence and other AI tools into its customer support experience. The most noteworthy of these was a February 2024 reveal that Apple was testing a new internal ChatGPT-like tool to assist its support advisors. However, it now appears that Apple may be preparing to eliminate the middleman and let customers chat directly with a bot.
Early last year, the folks at MacRumors uncovered information that AppleCare support advisors were working with a new tool dubbed “Ask” that would help them quickly find answers to customer support issues. This was intended to help them find resolutions to complex problems more efficiently than rummaging through a series of internal support articles.
It’s unclear when this “Ask” tool transitioned from testing to live production, but some of the work may have also served as the foundation for the product knowledge feature that was introduced to Siri as part of Apple Intelligence — the ability to ask Siri for help on how to perform tasks on your iPhone and other devices.
Once the “Ask” chatbot was rolled out among Apple’s support advisors, it seemed inevitable that Apple’s next step would be letting customers interact directly with the chatbot. After all, it only takes a bit more polish to move it from understanding requests made by trained support advisors to those made by end users.
Now, code found by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris suggests that Apple is laying the groundwork to take this to the next level. The AI-based “Support Assistant” is referenced for the Apple Support app, although it doesn’t appear to be live just yet, so it’s unclear when Apple plans to turn the key.
According to what Perris has been able to find, Apple doesn’t plan to replace humans for voice calls; however, users who interact with support through chat may eventually find themselves talking with the Support Assistant chatbot.
For now, it appears that this will be introduced as a dedicated self-help tool that customers can opt to use in the Apple Support app. Apple also offers chat-based support through the Apple Support app, utilizing the Messages Business Chat feature, which directly connects users with a human support agent. There are no indications that this will be taken over by an AI chatbot yet. However, it’s unclear if Support Assistant will act as a gatekeeper, requiring customers to try AI-generated solutions before they’re connected to a live agent.
The Support Assistant will also provide a way for users to upload content, allowing them to submit items such as screenshots to help troubleshoot problems.
As it stands now, the code makes it clear that the Support Assistant “uses generative models” and that it can sometimes provide “incorrect, misleading, incomplete, offensive, or harmful outputs.” There’s also a note that it shouldn’t be relied on in place of professional advice, so it sounds like there will still be an opportunity to fall back to an actual AppleCare support advisor if the Support Assistant can’t solve the issue.
Interestingly, the code also indicates that Apple will be collaborating with partners to provide Support Assistant. This suggests Apple is relying on external tools like ChatGPT instead of using its own large language models (LLMs). That’s probably wise, considering that it’s still struggling to perfect Siri.
Plus, as 9to5Mac’s Marcus Mendes explains, product support is a more focused area that might be better served by more specialized tools built using a technique known as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). This involves training the language model with a very specific dataset — in this case, Apple’s support knowledge base. This allows the chatbot to handle basic support cases without being distracted by the sort of things that cause hallucinations in more sophisticated LLMs. This would enable the Support Assistant to answer simple questions, freeing up human support agents to tackle more complex problems.
This type of chatbot-based customer support isn’t anything new. While Apple might want to do something unique here to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack, it’s got enough on its plate with Apple Intelligence that it doesn’t have the time or energy to be creative in areas where it would mostly be reinventing the wheel.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
